The Sun Comes Up

This film was Jeanette MacDonald's last film. And, considering it's a nice little family movie, she went out in style.

Helen is distraught. Her son has just died and she has decided to retreat to the countryside to try to forget. This is made tougher because the boy's dog refuses to leave her and she reluctantly takes the dog along with her. Through the course of the movie, Helen becomes friends with an orphan boy, Jerry (Claude Jarmin Jr.) and the woman who wants to be alone and forget soon learns to live again.

This film is less a Lassie film than most. Sure, the dog's important to the story...but the humans are more important and he's more a supporting player. Overall, very engaging and a nice story that you are sure to enjoy....and made with the usual MGM style and flair.

Jeanette MacDonald stars as a widowed concert singer who suffers another disaster and yearns to retire from the world. She loads up her nifty wood-paneled convertible (a Plymouth?) and dog (Lassie) and sets out. She finds a house in the mountains of a small Southern town and settles in. But she's never runs a household before and discovers she must do her own household chores, cooking, etc. This puts her into contact with the comical-but-wise town grocer (Percy Kilbride) and some other locals. Most annoying, however, is the boy Kilbride has sent to do chores. The boy and dog instantly bond. Slowly, MacDonald gets back her hold on her life, learns to love the boy (Claude Jarman) and return to her own world. But she'll never be the same.

Full of funny moments and a few that will tug your heart strings, this is a nice old-fashioned film and well done by all involved. The Technicolor is also beautiful.

MacDonald, in her final film appearance, looks great and turns in a terrific performance as the woman who learns to love again. She also sings a few songs, including a beautiful rendition of "Un Bel di Vedremo" from MADAMA BUTTERFLY. Kilbride is hilarious as is Margaret Hamilton as the nosy spinster. Jarman is solid in a role that could have been cloying. Others include Lloyd Nolan, Lewis Stone, Ida Moore, Dwayne Hickman, Hope Landin, and Barbara Billingsley.

What a shame the great MacDonald never found another film vehicle. Voice aside, she was a marvelous actress with a great sense of comic timing. Her final film doesn't rank with her unforgettable films with Nelson Eddy, but it's a fine and memorable film in its own right.

Though she didn't intend The Sun Comes Up to be her final film, it turned out that way for Jeanette MacDonald. In this movie she plays, what else, a concert singer who is a war widow. After a few years of devoting herself to raising her only son, Dwayne Hickman, MacDonald is encouraged by her manager Lewis Stone to go back to the concert stage.

She goes back and becomes a great success in her comeback. But after the concert she sees her son run down by a truck as he was trying to save their collie Lassie from the same fate.

That just about destroys her and who could blame her for wanting to get away from it all. She rents an unused house deep in the Appalachians in North Carolina that's owned by Lloyd Nolan. She and Lassie go to live there and get involved with a group of kids from the county orphanage. Especially one young man, Claude Jarman, Jr., who reminds her of her late son.

Jeanette gets some good opera and concert material to sing, items that were staples in her real concerts. The highlights for me are Un Bel Di from Madame Butterfly and Romance.

And she gets her most cooperative co-star ever in Lassie. The beloved collie pulls off quite a rescue in the climax, but didn't steal any scenes from Jeanette MacDonald.

She never planned that The Sun Comes Up would be her last film. She had a lot of ambitions to return to the screen. During the Fifties she did The King and I in summer stock and hoped to be cast in the film adaption as Anna Leonowens. I think the part would have suited her perfectly and she wouldn't have to have been dubbed as Deborah Kerr was.

And one part she really wanted was as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music. She loved the song Climb Every Mountain. But by the time the film version of Sound of Music was being cast, Jeanette's health was failing.

Still The Sun Comes Up is a fine family film and a fitting end for a screen legend.

Even if you don't like Jeanette McDonald, and even if you don't like child actors, and even if you don't like Lassie, do yourself a favor and rent The Sun Comes Up just to listen to the main theme during the opening credits. André Previn earned a well-deserved Rag nomination for his first film composition. It's such a beautiful, layered theme that sounds exactly as it's supposed to. It sounds like a sunrise, the promise of a brighter future, and a deep inhalation after years of shallow breathing.

If you want to watch more than the opening credits, you'll get to see Jeanette McDonald in a drama where she barely sings. She starts the movie off as a successful performer, but when her young son is accidentally killed, she tells her manager, Lewis Stone, that she's going to retire and retreat into the country. She packs up her car and her grief and drives to a small mountain town where she can hopefully start over. What she doesn't yet realize is that in a small town, no one leaves you alone! The owner of the one general store, Percy Kilbride, is extremely nosy, a confusing Margaret Hamilton wants to be her friend, and the young errand boy, Claude Jarman Jr., who grows attached to her dog doesn't let her harden her heart as she'd intended.

I didn't really know what to expect out of this movie, but it was pretty enjoyable. My favorite scene was when Jeanette leaves for the countryside. She's left her son's dog, Lassie, behind because it would be too painful to continue to live with her and show her affection; her son was hit by a car while trying to get Lassie out of the middle of the road. But Lassie's lonely and confused too, and it might be some sort of comfort to love who her son loved. Jeanette's very conflicted, and it's a really powerful scene.

I kept waiting for Lloyd Nolan to show up, since he got such a high billing, but he's hardly in the movie. Instead of a romance where a mother can only move on from her tragedy by falling in love, Jeanette grows in other ways. Give this one a shot if it sounds interesting. It gets a bit corny in some parts, but keep in mind it is a Lassie movie. It's supposed to be a little corny.

This is a movie that may be a bit corny by modern measure but a wonderful film to sit down with a young child and watch. Old time values--a slice of life with real problems---a happy ending.