East Side of Heaven *** (1939, Bing Crosby, Joan Blondell, Mischa Auer) – Classic Movie Review 7391

Director David Butler’s nice but only middling 1939 Universal Pictures black and white musical comedy with songs East Side of Heaven stars Bing Crosby as a crooning cabbie called Denny Martin, who is surrogate dad to Baby Sandy (a real-life girl playing a boy – that could be a bad start in life!).

The big plot problem here is that Denny (Crosby) and his fiancée, telephonist operator Mary Wilson (Joan Blondell), cannot get married now that the tot has appeared on the scene.

Despite the emaciated plot, East Side of Heaven is not too bad at all, what with its good stars, fine turns form the support players, a fairly well set-up and developed yarn (especially considering its uncosmic limitations) and very pleasant ballads by James V Monaco (music) and Johnny Burke (lyrics) trilled by an in-good-voice Crosby.

Among the several songs (including East Side of Heaven and Sing a Song of Sunbeams), there is one outstanding, zippy number: ‘Hang Your Heart on a Hickory Limb’.

Also in the cast are Mischa Auer, C Aubrey Smith, Irene Hervey, Robert Kent, Jerome Cowan, Jane Jones, Rose Valyda, Helen Warner, Jack Powell, Matty Malneck, Wade Botelier, Mary Carr, Russell Hicks, Chester Clute, Pat Hartigan, J Farrell MacDonald, Frank Moran, Clarence Wilson and Edward Earle.

Baby Sandy [Alexandra Lee Henville] was born on 14 January 1938. Her film career was over when she was five. Later she married and had three children, and became a legal secretary for the Los Angeles county government.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7391

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