Rain or Shine

In the 1930s, Joe Cook was one of the biggest stars on Broadway, headlining in several hit musical comedies. He co-starred with Ethel Merman in the Broadway show "Fine and Dandy", getting billing equal to Merman's. Joe Cook's talents were amazing: he was a juggler, an acrobat, a song-and-dance man and a comedian who did weird monologues while wiggling his thumbs. Tragically, he succumbed to Parkinson's disease after making only two feature films and a few shorts. "Rain or Shine" is the film version of one of his Broadway musical hits, with all the songs left out ... and it's the best surviving evidence of Cook's astonishing talents. "Rain or Shine" is also an excellent example of Frank Capra's early directorial skill.

In this movie, Cook plays the utility man in the Rainey Circus, which gives performances "Rain or Shine" ... except that it's always raining. When most of the circus performers can't go on, Cook becomes virtually a one-man circus, with just a couple of helpers for his acrobatic routines. Joe Cook's chief stooge in this film (and on Broadway) was Dave Chasen, a Harpo-ish comedian who later became famous as the founder of Chasen's Restaurant in Los Angeles. Chasen's schtick was a distinctive hand-waving gesture which many comedians today are still copying.

Joe Cook is brilliant in this film. In one scene, he does an astonishing juggling trick with a cigar and a kitchen match that will make you want to rewind several times so you can watch it again ... and again, and again! It looks so simple, yet Cook must have spent hundreds of hours practising this one trick.

"Rain or Shine" has a lot of broad slapstick humour, most of it hilarious. One scene at a dinner party doesn't work, involving a huge pile of spaghetti. We can clearly see that the "spaghetti" is really twine, which kills the joke. Unfunny comedian Tom Howard plays a grouch named A.K. Shrewsbury, and there's an obscure joke about what an "A.K." he is. (A.K. = "alter kocker", a Yiddish insult.)

Among the circus acts in this movie is Ethel Greer, a fat lady who weighed well over 25 stone. I was astonished by the scene in which this huge woman falls out of her circus caravan into a rain puddle. Ethel Greer actually did this stunt herself, because no stuntwoman was large enough to double for her. Kenneth Anger's book "Hollywood Babylon 2" contains a photograph of an immensely fat woman whom Anger unkindly claims is Elizabeth Taylor. She's not, you know: she's Ethel Greer, and the photo in Anger's book is a scene from "Rain or Shine". Also in this movie is a snake charmer, played by silent-film comedienne Louise Fazenda in a rare sound-film appearance. (Fazenda married producer Hal Wallis and retired.)

Some bad news: the dignified African-American actor Clarence Muse appears in this film, playing one of the "Yassah, boss" roles that Frank Capra kept lumbering him with. In Capra's autobiography, he refers to Muse as his "pet actor". No comment. SPOILER WARNING: At this film's climax, the circus tent catches fire. There's an exciting sequence as Cook and all the circus hands try to put out the flames. Ironically, the only time it STOPS raining on the circus in "Rain or Shine" is when the tent is on fire and the rain would have done some good. As soon as the fire is out, the rain starts pouring down again. "Rain or Shine" is must-see viewing! My rating: 10 out of 10, since Joe Cook's brilliant talents more than compensate for any of this film's flaws.

In the early days of sound films, studios really didn't know how to use the new medium. Instead of normal speaking voices and normal actors, Hollywood felt a need to overwhelm the audience with sound. A lot of vaudeville comics who spoke a mile a minute were shoved in front of the cameras to take advantage of the fact that audiences could now hear the actors speak. Some of these early talkies are downright dreadful while some others are just odd curios. RAIN OR SHINE falls into the category of just plain dreadful.

Most of the blame for this film being so terrible and tough to watch falls on the shoulders of its director, Frank Capra. While Capra did great things for Harry Langdon during the silent era and from the mid-1930s on he made some of the most iconic American films of the era (IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, MEET JOHN DOE and many others), but even great directors have their duds--and this film was definitely a dud.

The film is nominally about a circus that is chronically on the verge of bankruptcy. However, the entire show was the vaudevillian, Joe Cook. While one of the reviewers thought that Cook was hilarious, he was simply too much--like a giant migraine. He talked and talked and talked and talked. If you liked this sort of in your face routine again and again, then you'd probably like the film. However, I didn't think he was funny and felt the director should have placed more emphasis on the talented members of the cast. That, or simply punched Cook in the mouth and told him to shut the heck up!! Terrible pacing, annoying dialog and nothing to like--this is truly one of the most painful films I have seen. I only kept watching because I assumed it would get better---it didn't.

I think previous commentators have missed the boat on this. The film is a matter of the director overcoming the star. Joe Cook's shtick wears thin. His first encounter with the store owner is droll, but a series of non-sequiters do not make a comedy. Capra's direction is brilliant. (Spolier:) Obviously, the elephant pushing the fat lady is a tour de force, and the riot and fire at the climax are spectacular, but notice his great tracking shots. The camera follows characters as they saunter through the circus. What was worth seeing and preserving here is not Cook's quaint act, but the way of life of the circus, a "Water for Elephants" scene.

RAIN OR SHINE is a neat little circus film directed by Frank Capra and based on a Broadway musical that ran for almost a year in 1928.

By the time this film went into production, the vogue for musicals was over, so all the songs were cut from the film (a common occurrence in 1930). Still, there was enough plot to carry the 90-minute film.

Joe Cook was the star. The long-forgotten, Cook was a major star on Broadway. His nickname was "the one-man vaudeville" because he could sing, dance, do comedy, and perform a series of juggling tricks. Cook made his film debut in a 1929 talkie short called AT THE BALLGAME.

In RAIN OR SHINE he plays the fast-talking manager of a failing circus owned by a girl (Joan Peers) who inherited it from her father. Two employees are in cahoots to ensure the circus fails so they can take it over. In a weak subplot, Peers and her boyfriend (William Collier, Jr.) attend a disastrous dinner party at his snooty parents' mansion.

Cook is front and center through most of the film as he attends to all the problems and egos under the big top. There's also a funny running gag with Cook and a local citizen (Tom Howard) and how he becomes a partner with the help of the Princess (Louise Fazenda).

The finale is quite exciting after the bank attaches the day's receipts and the performers realize they won't get paid. Cook is terrific in a series of circus tricks as he tries to put on a big-top show all by himself. Peers and Collier are OK as the young lovers, Fazenda has little to do, Howard is funny as the local, and Dave Chasen (who founded the famous restaurant) is funny as the stooge.

Pretty bad film.

This is like an exploitation film of the circus. It easily could have been the documentary about life of circus people; that would have been actually pretty impressive, since there are not much documentaries about circus folks, at least not at that time. Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is almost 70 years later.

But I digress. There is not much plot here, it's just circus doing circus in front of the camera. Acting is poor, story is not existent and it's pretty obvious that Capra at that time was the gun for hire and did what studio demanded.

There is only one reason to watch this film. If you are on a Capra marathon, e.g. you want to see all the Capra film, go ahead. If you don't seek to accomplish that, just stay away from pre-1933 Capra films. Almost all of them are pretty bad.