Penny Serenade **** (1941, Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Beulah Bondi, Ann Doran, Edgar Buchanan) – Classic Movie Review 2339

Producer-director George Stevens’s 1941 romantic drama again teams Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, both seen at their best in this delicious heart-string tugger. It is the third of three movies pairing the duo.

Grant and Dunne play an infertile couple, Roger and Julie Adams, who decide to adopt. After a few other troubles, the parents are wiped out when the child dies of an illness, and their marriage is in desperate danger.

The movie starts with Julie planning to leave Roger, playing old recordings that remind her of events in their lives, the song playing when they first met in a music store, and songs recalling their courtship, their marriage, their desire for a child, and their joys and sorrows.

Based on a story by Martha Cheavers, with a screenplay by Morrie Riskind, this is a highly confident, professional piece of work and it is impeccably handled by director Stevens in all aspects in Hollywood’s best golden era style. Admittedly though, people who enjoy Grant’s normally cynical persona may find it hard going. But, just when this hugely sentimental weepie might be starting to grind you down, Edgar Buchanan is spot on with the comedy as the couple’s buddy, Applejack. It’s the very kind of movie they just don’t make any more.

Cary Grant was Oscar nominated for Best Actor, one of only two nominations in his entire long career. The other was None But the Lonely Heart (1944). He never won and had to be content with an Honorary Award in 1970 ‘for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues’.

Also in the cast are Beulah Bondi, Ann Doran, Eva Lee Kuney, Leonard Wiley, Wallis Clark, Walter Soderling, Jane Biffle, Billy Bevan, Henry Dixon, Edmund Elton, John Ferguson, Charles Flynn, Otto Han, Doris Herbert, Frank Mills, Frank Moran, Al Seymour, Ben Taggart, John Tyrrell and Dick Wessel.

Dunne said that this was her favourite film because it reminded her of her own adopted daughter.

The earthquake depicted in the movie has a purely coincidental relationship to the real-life quake centred on the town of Chungpu in Taiwan on December 17 1941. The movie was released in April 1941, eight months earlier.

Cinematographer Joseph Walker replaced the sick Franz Planer.

Grant and Dunne also starred together in The Awful Truth in 1937 and My Favorite Wife in 1940.

http://derekwinnert.com/the-awful-truth-1937-irene-dunne-cary-grant-classic-movie-review-1247/

http://derekwinnert.com/my-favorite-wife-cary-grant-irene-dunne-randolph-scott-classic-movie-review-1279/

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2339

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com