The Rainey Circus performs two shows per day, rain or shine. Leading the variety acts is Smiley, comic, juggler, acrobat and explosive showman. Smiley is played by Joe Cook, today quite an obscure name, but in 1930 a name above the title; he was a Broadway star of the 1920s and the undisputed king of one-man-vaudeville. In 1928, Rain or Shine was one of Cook’s successful musical shows; for stylistic or economic reasons, Columbia cut the music and the songs, leaving just Singin’ in the Rain (the immortal tune by Nacio Herb Brown debuted a year before in Hollywood Revue of 1929) to perk up the opening credits. So the sound filling the screen is just Cook’s gift of the gab, his showers of wisecracking, the surreal and fiery jokes that at times have a touch of the Marx brothers (there is even a kind of toothless Harpo among the props and second leads). This talkative early talkie also has a melancholic side; we know that if this actor makes us dizzy with his chatter, it is also because he must face the fact that he is all by himself, a man in love with no illusion left. The circus story deftly avoids the weepie touch as well as the freak show; Jo Swerling and Dorothy Howell’s writing has a fluid comic rhythm reminiscent of theater, and the directing has its great moments: in the first, long sentimental sequence everything sways, giving us a sense of the precarious nature of daily life in a circus caravan: on the other hand, as Joseph McBride noted, “In retrospect, it is impossible not to read the film version of Rain or Shine as an allegory of the Depression, despite its seemingly frivolous subject matter (…) Cook’s Smiley can be seen as a Franklin Roosevelt precursor, galvanizing the demoralized troupe with his energy and courage”.

Paola Cristalli