Penny Serenade (1941)

Directed by: George Stevens | 119 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Beulah Bondi, Edgar Buchanan, Ann Doran, Eva Lee Kuney, Leonard Willey, Wallis Clark, Walter Soderling, Jane Biffle

For more than three decades he was Hollywood’s Favorite Leading Man. Attractive, charming and versatile. Whether you cast him in thrillers, dramas or romantic comedies, Cary Grant carried each film with apparent ease. Still, he earned only two Oscar nominations, both for atmospheric melodramas from the early 1940s: “Penny Serenade” (1941) and “None But the Lonely Heart” (1944). Whether this is really his best work is something you can question. But both films do offer Grant the space to show how versatile he is. Chances are he got his “Penny Serenade” nomination because of the emotional plea he makes to the judge when he’s on the brink of losing custody of his one-year-old daughter. It’s not the only sad moment in this George Stevens-directed drama, in which Julie (Irene Dunne) recalls her tumultuous marriage to Roger (Grant) to the sounds of her record collection. In fact, the film is one long flashback, which was quite unusual for the time.

We see how Julie and Roger first meet at the record store where she works. An immediately beautiful scene, in which we see the charmer Grant at work. That he had a convincing chemistry with Dunne could already be seen in ‘The Awful Truth’ (1937) and ‘My Favorite Wife’ (1940). We immediately believe that she falls head over heels for him. But ‘Penny Serenade’ isn’t about the run-up to the wedding, it’s about the events after. Roger appears to be opportunistic by nature; he makes quick decisions without giving them a second thought. He quits a good job as a correspondent in Japan (the film premiered about eight months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, so there’s no question of any hostilities yet) as quickly as he ever took the offer. The next business adventure he embarks on is publishing a loss-making newspaper in a dormitory town. Thanks to the unconditional support of his wife and technical man ‘Applejack’ (Edgar Buchanan), he manages to keep it up for some time.

Julie has her own dreams. Due to a tragic accident while they were still living in Japan, she can never have children again. Yet she wants nothing more. Applejack comes up with the solution: adoption. Roger also seems to be poking at that idea. Miss Oliver, the head of the adoption agency, seems a bit stern at first, but once she sees how much Julie and Roger love each other and how much love they can give to a child, she is 100 percent committed to making their wish come true. And then the time has come: a child is available for the Adams couple. Not the two-year-old boy with curly blond hair and blue eyes they had in mind, but a five-week-old girl. They were totally unprepared for a baby, and that results in the necessary hilarious – and recognizable for (young) parents – moments. Fortunately, they get support from unexpected quarters. Luck seems to smile on the fledgling family, but when things go bad and their adoption probation ends, tragedy looms.

Grant and Dunne are by far the strongest trumps in this film. Both in the humorous scenes in which they try to get used to their baby, and in the more emotional moments, they hit the nail on the head. Bondi and Buchanan in the main supporting roles also make a nice, warm contribution. The ‘gimmick’ in ‘Penny Serenade’ – the constant return to Dunne in the present, when another record is finished and they immediately set up another – is actually superfluous. Only towards the end is something actually added to the story in the ‘present’. Stevens would have been better off limiting himself to the flashbacks and just sticking them together – that would also have saved some unnecessary playing time. The scenes in which the new-fangled parents go to pick up their baby and take it home for the first time are particularly effective, especially because, in addition to the necessary humor, there is also a lot of endearment. Towards the end the tragedy takes over and the film gets a bit heavier. And although there is hope at the end of the tunnel, ‘Penny Serenade’ is mainly a tearjerker pur sang, so it has withstood the test of time reasonably well and especially thrives with a fantastic cast.