Plot:
- by Zoë
Shaw
In Japan, an earthquake
causes the death of Roger and Julie's unborn child. Back in America, they
adopt a baby despite the family's precarious financial condition. They raise
their daughter until the age of 6, when she dies suddenly. Grief almost
separates Roger and Julie, but they are brought together again when they are
offered another chance to adopt.
Review:
- by Zoë
Shaw
Newspaper man Roger Adams (Cary Grant) and record shop
worker Julie Gardiner (Irene Dunne) fall in love at first sight. Their romance leads to
marriage on New Year's Eve, after which Roger leaves for a job in Tokyo. Julie joins him
three months later and announces she is pregnant. Disaster strikes when Julie loses the
baby in an earthquake and is unable to bear any more children. Julie and Roger return to
America where Roger buys a small country newspaper, and the couple begin the process of
adopting a child. However, during their years "probation" with the baby, Roger's
newspaper folds and it looks as though the couple are going to lose the child they love
dearly due to their poor finances. A heartfelt plea by Roger to the judge secures the
adoption, and they raise the child to the age of six. A sudden illness takes the child
away from them causing the couple to come close to separation.
This separation is where the movie begins, for the story is
told through a series of flashbacks, each introduced by a piece of music from Julie's
record collection. Cary was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for his superb performance,
but I can't help feeling that this movie really belongs to Edgar Buchanan, who plays the
couples loyal friend, Applejack, to perfection. Just watch the scene in which he bathes
the baby!
If you are going to watch this movie, make sure you have a
big box of hankies close by. If, by some miracle, you manage to keep a dry eye through the
scene where Cary appeals to the judge not to take away the baby, the ending of this movie
will undoubtedly make you weep.
VARIETY
Film Review - April 16, 1941
- by "Flin"
- submitted by Barry Martin
Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, who a short time ago had audiences
howling at their antics in 'The Awful Truth,' return to the
Columbia banner in 'Penny Serenade,' and the same customers are
going to have just as fine a time sniffling and weeping over a
very sentimental story about husband, wife and adopted
child. Exhibitors would be smart to furnish handkerchiefs at
the boxoffice. Incidentally, they had better lay in a big
supply. This is the best tear-jerker that has come to the
screen since the first production of 'Madame.' And that's
going way back.
Produced with less skill and acted
with less sincerity, 'Penny Serenade' might have missed the mark
by a mile, but George Stevens' direction and the excellence of the
stars' playing make the film an entry for top bookings and
extended first runs. It is fashioned for the family trade
everywhere, with special matinee appeal. The characters are
young home folks and could be duplicated in an instant from any
local phone book.
Here's the story. Miss Dunne
and Grant adopt a six weeks old baby and raise her until she is
six, when she dies, after a brief illness. Then they adopt a
boy of two.
That's all, but the telling of it
from an excellently written screenscript by Morrie Ryskind, who
found inspiration from a McCall's Magazine story by Martha
Cheavens, occupies nearly two hours, in the course of which there
are tenderness, heart-throb, comedy and good, old-fashioned,
gulping tears. Half a dozen times the yarn approaches the
saccharine, only to be turned back into sound, human comedy-drama.
Film marks the return of Miss Dunne
after an extended vacation, the only effects of which seem to be
that she proves again her place among the handful of women screen
stars. In the role of not too prosperous wife of a
small-town struggling newspaper publisher, she is gay and earnest,
and plays the sentimental passages with restraint. She has
had more spectacular roles, but none that required sustaining
quite the mood of her latest film.
Grant, also, takes the assignment
in stride, scoring in several bits as a baby nurse and pleading
foster-father.
Supporting cast includes Beulah
Bondi, Edgar Buchanan and Ann Doran. Despite the tuneful
title, the only melody hard is via a few phonograph
platters.
Film should turn out to be a
serenade of quarters at the boxoffice.
NEW YORK TIMES
Film Review - May 16, 1941
- by Bosley Crowther
- submitted by Barry Martin
When you go to the Music Hall this time, take along a couple of
blotters and a sponge. In fact, if you are prone to easy
weeping, you might even take along a washtub. And don't be
disturbed if your neighbor, unprovided, drips and splatters all
over you. For this time the comic muse very frequently gives
way to tears. This time Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, whose
previous cinematic marriages have been more or less on the
frivolous and nicely indecent side, are so blissfully and properly
united that it takes a tragedy to threaten briefly to tear them
apart. This time the new picture is Columbia's "Penny
Serenade."
When you think about it coolly and
dispassionately - and after an interval of at least an hour - you
can't help but feel that somebody has slipped a fast one over on
you. Maybe it is Producer George Stevens, who has put
together a film which employs not one but six or seven of the
recognized sob-story tricks. Maybe it is Miss Dunne, who
originally succumbs to one of the most severe cases of galloping
nostalgia we have ever witnessed on the screen. And maybe it
is Mr. Grant, that worldly and jocular chap, who shamelessly
permits a tiny tot to play "Home, Sweet Home" on his
heart-strings. The thing is you never suspect these people
are going quite so soft on you until - bam! - they are wallowing
in sentiment and your eyes are leaking like a sieve.
But that's the way it is.
From the moment that Miss Dunne sadly turns on the old gramaphone
and, to the plaintive strains of "You Were Meant for
Me," the scene fades back to her first meeting with Mr.
Grant, you may recognize that you are in for a reminiscent
wrench. Then, as she successively replenishes the music box
with such nostalgic tunes as "Just a Memory,"
"Missouri Waltz," "Poor Butterfly," "Blue
Heaven," etc., right out of a book, you follow the couple as
they marry, suffer countless little woes, buy a country newspaper,
adopt a baby and finally lose the child they love so much.
And slowly, without being aware of
it, you drift with them and the film from brittle, sophisticated
comedy to out-and-out softy stuff, from the quixotic plighting of
their troth at a New Year's Eve party to the first fearful bathing
of baby in the familiar new-parents comedy vein. And then
you are sniffling and gulping as little daughter takes part in her
first school play and you know that the teacher's promise that she
can be "an angel next year" is irony. Somehow, it
all goes down, despite a woefully overlong script - all but Mr.
Grant's recalcitrance after the little one is gone. It's
hard to believe that a man could treat his ever-loving wife so
wretchedly, at a time when both would be drawn even closer
together by grief. And their sudden joyful willingness to
adopt another child is open to doubt.
But some very credible acting on
the part of Mr. Grant and Miss Dunne is responsible in the main
for the infectious quality of the film. Edgar Buchanan, too,
gives an excellent performance as a good-old-Charlie friend, and
Beulah Bondi is sensible as an orphanage matron.
Heart-warming is the word for both of them. As a matter of
fact, the whole picture deliberately cozies up to the heart.
Noel Coward once dryly observed how extraordinarily potent cheap
music is. That is certainly true of "Penny
Serenade."
Review:
- by
Kathy Fox
For Cary Grant fans
and for classic movie lovers alike, PENNY SERENADE, filmed in 1941, and
released on my birth date, April 24, 1941, two years prior to my entering
this world, is a film that brings out the emotions and empathy of every
moviegoer. This is Cary Grant's first Oscar nomination (he was nominated
again in 1944, for NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART) but he lost his first Oscar to
rival Cary Cooper in SERGEANT YORK. Gary Grant gives a solid and very
poignant performance as Roger Adams who falls deeply in love with Julie
Gardiner, a record store employee, graciously played by Irene Dunne. Gary
will make three movies total with Ms. Dunne: THE AWFUL TRUTH, MY FAVORITE
WIFE, and PENNY SERENADE. They make a very handsome couple. This love
story is about the trials and tribulations and devastation which befall this
beautiful couple after Julie has a miscarriage because of an earthquake in Tokyo,
Japan, and their subsequent adoption in California of a six-week-old baby
girl, Trina, who falls ill when she is about six years old and also dies.
This movie is filmed in flashbacks, via the vehicle of old records, to
introduce the story to the moviegoer. When Julie and Roger first meet,
the look on Cary's face when he asks Julie if she has a victrola to play the
plethora of records he has just bought from her, gets me every time. Cary's
facial expressions throughout his films are of extreme importance to the
moviegoer. He learned this technique when he was working with Bob Pender and
his Knockabout Comedians in Europe and subsequently in America after he came
over on the R.M.S. Olympic in 1920. Mr. Grant uses this technique, the
art of speaking without words, throughout his movies and as one views his
films, the moviegoer is privileged to seeing and understanding this great
asset as displayed in all of his characters. When Roger goes to the
lawyer in order to obtain full custody of his daughter, Trina, his speech to
the judge is so eloquent and filled with emotion that the tears come
non-stop. Every time I watch it, the same emotion erupts in my psyche:
the ability of Mr. Grant to bring the moviegoers to their knees and
experience the same feelings that he is portraying on the screen. This is
the true mark of a great actor. And of course, we all know that Cary
was the greatest of comedians, as well.
This film is of a serious nature, the death of two children, but it is intertwined
with the comedic abilities of Grant and Dunne, who are very comfortable with
each other on screen. When you look at the time table of Cary Grant's
life, this movie was made in 1941 and Cary was 25 years away from the birth
of his first and only child, Jennifer, in 1966. Since Mr. Grant is no
longer with us and his life is an open book for those you are interested,
all of us Cary Grant lovers can look back over his life as he made these 72
unforgettable movies and think of what was happening personally in his life
as he was making these wonderful films.
The story ends happily as Roger and Julia are planning to separate when a
call comes from Miss Oliver of the adoption agency, who has another child to
place with them, a male child being the exact age and description of their
original request years earlier. This gives the couple renewed strength
in their marriage and the fact that they will now have a child to love
again. Their life is complete. This is a beautiful story and for
those who love old films, as I do, this is a must-see. Without
classic film, we would be missing so much that is true in life today and
what you rarely find on the screen today, I absolutely recommend PENNY
SERENADE.
Review
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Reviews at the Cary Grant Shrine
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