Ray Bolger

SUNNY

RKO, 1941.  Directed by Herbert Wilcox.  Camera:  Russell Metty.  With Anna Neagle, Ray Bolger, John Carroll, Edward Everett Horton, Grace Hartman, Paul Hartman, Frieda Inescort, Helen Westley, Benny Rubin, Muggins Davies, Richard Lane, Martha Tilton, Torben Meyer.

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In the crush of the Mardi Gras festivities, Larry Warren, the scion of a wealthy New Orleans family, is thrown together with Sunny O'Sullivan, a bareback rider in the circus.  Commanded to kiss by the Queen of Hearts and her court, the two embrace, after which Sunny disappears into the night.

Enchanted by his brief encounter with Sunny, Larry goes to the circus, where he joins his sister Elizabeth, family attorney Henry Bates and debutante Juliet Runnymeade.  To his delight, Larry sees Sunny dancing onstage and rushes out to send her a bouquet of flowers.  Larry tries to make a date to meet Sunny after the show but, when a misunderstanding results in Sunny thinking that she has been stood up, she joins her friend, Bunny Billings, instead.

When Sunny and Larry accidentally meet again at a restaurant, Larry pulls Sunny away from her friends and leads her on a tour of the city.  By night's end, the two have fallen in love and Larry proposes.  After bidding her circus friends farewell, Sunny goes to Waverly Hall, the Warrens' ancestral home, to meet Larry's crusty aunt Barbara and the rest of the family.  At a formal reception that night, Elizabeth snubs Sunny, and Aunt Barbara instructs Henry to "buy off" Sunny.  Henry's business proposal sends Sunny to bed sobbing until Aunt Barbara, who was testing the girl, welcomes her into the family.

On the day of the wedding, most of the social register is at the Waverly house when Bunny and the circus troupe arrive to surprise Sunny.  Snatching a last-minute opportunity to humiliate Sunny, Elizabeth suggests that the group perform before the ceremony.  Encouraged by the dancing antics of Juliet and her partner Egghead, the troupe begins to show off.  Sunny is stunned when Larry orders her friends out of his house, and leaves with the troupe and returns to the circus.

On opening night, the show is sold out but, when Sunny goes onstage, she discovers that Larry has bought all the tickets.  Furious, Sunny storms off the stage and locks herself in her trailer.  Larry then hitches the trailer to his car and tows it to a waiting riverboat.  Aboard the boat, Sunny runs out on deck and, when Larry fears that she has fallen overboard, he jumps in the river to save her.  Larry's brush with death forces Sunny to realize that she still loves him and the two reconcile.

American Film Institute Catalog