The title "Penny Serenade" refers to a popular song of the period, and it is popular music that provides the framework for this film. Julie Adams, a young married woman on the verge of splitting up with her husband, sits beside a pile of records. Each one has a special meaning for her, and as she plays them she is reminded of episodes from her past. (She originally worked in a record shop and first met her journalist husband Roger there). The film shows in a series of flashbacks Julie and Roger's first meeting, their life together after he was sent to be his paper's correspondent in Japan, how she suffered a miscarriage and how they adopted a baby daughter because she was unable to have children.
Most of the reviews of this film that I have seen, both on this board and elsewhere, express the opinion that it is a romantic drama rather than a comedy like "The Awful Truth" and "My Favorite Wife", two earlier films in which Irene Dunn and Cary Grant also acted together. This is not an opinion with which I would altogether agree. Although I have never seen "The Awful Truth", there are moments in "Penny Serenade" which reminded me strongly of the pure comedy of "My Favorite Wife". Indeed, I felt that the comic scenes in "Penny Serenade" were better done and more amusing than anything in the earlier film. I laughed out loud (something I never did with "My Favorite Wife") at some of the scenes of Roger and Julie's life together with little Trina, particularly the Nativity play and the scene where Cary Grant is trying to change a nappy.
The trouble with "Penny Serenade" is that it can never decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a serious drama. The early scenes of Roger and Julie's courtship and their days in Japan are all light-hearted. (Interestingly enough for a film which opened only a few months before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese characters are presented in a generally sympathetic way, which suggests that there was little hostility in America towards Japan at this time. The idea of some underlying enmity between the two peoples seems to have been an invention of the Japanese politicians and generals). Tragedy briefly intrudes with Julie's miscarriage, but when the Adamses adopt Trina this leads into the most comic part of the film.
The plot then moves back into serious mode. Roger has given up his job as a foreign correspondent in order to become the editor of the local paper in a small California town. As the circulation of the local paper is less than a thousand this struck me as an unlikely career move, but it is one made necessary by the demands of the plot. The paper folds financially and Roger loses his job, which means that he and Julie are threatened with losing their adopted daughter because the adoption agency will only place children with financially secure families. Roger saves the day with an impassioned speech to the judge, and there is a brief return to comedy with the Nativity scene, before the final tragedy of Trina's death.
The main flaw of the film is not so much that it is excessively sentimental, but rather that the comic and tragic elements do not sit easily together. The switches from one to the other are often abrupt. The scriptwriters seem to have been aware of this problem, as the sentiment is sometimes downplayed. Trina's death, for example, is simply announced in a letter from Julie to the head of the adoption agency without any heart-wrenching deathbed scene. The ending of the film, in which Julie and Roger's marriage is saved when the adoption agency offer them another child to adopt, is a particularly implausible way of providing a "happy ending". That the loss of a child could have brought them so close to divorce within a few days suggests that there was something seriously wrong with their marriage in the first place, and the idea that their grief could be so completely and suddenly overcome by the adoption of another child seems a very unrealistic view of the psychology of loss and bereavement.
Despite my reservations, I have given this film a mark of six, partly because it is in parts very funny and partly because it is very professionally acted, particularly by Cary Grant, Irene Dunn and Beulah Bondi as the lady from the adoption agency. Grant is very good in the comic scenes; he was normally better at comedy than at serious drama, although there are exceptions such as his work with Hitchcock. My overall impression, however, was that it was an uneasy mixture of comedy and tragedy that did not quite hang together as a coherent whole. 6/10
Most of the reviews of this film that I have seen, both on this board and elsewhere, express the opinion that it is a romantic drama rather than a comedy like "The Awful Truth" and "My Favorite Wife", two earlier films in which Irene Dunn and Cary Grant also acted together. This is not an opinion with which I would altogether agree. Although I have never seen "The Awful Truth", there are moments in "Penny Serenade" which reminded me strongly of the pure comedy of "My Favorite Wife". Indeed, I felt that the comic scenes in "Penny Serenade" were better done and more amusing than anything in the earlier film. I laughed out loud (something I never did with "My Favorite Wife") at some of the scenes of Roger and Julie's life together with little Trina, particularly the Nativity play and the scene where Cary Grant is trying to change a nappy.
The trouble with "Penny Serenade" is that it can never decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a serious drama. The early scenes of Roger and Julie's courtship and their days in Japan are all light-hearted. (Interestingly enough for a film which opened only a few months before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese characters are presented in a generally sympathetic way, which suggests that there was little hostility in America towards Japan at this time. The idea of some underlying enmity between the two peoples seems to have been an invention of the Japanese politicians and generals). Tragedy briefly intrudes with Julie's miscarriage, but when the Adamses adopt Trina this leads into the most comic part of the film.
The plot then moves back into serious mode. Roger has given up his job as a foreign correspondent in order to become the editor of the local paper in a small California town. As the circulation of the local paper is less than a thousand this struck me as an unlikely career move, but it is one made necessary by the demands of the plot. The paper folds financially and Roger loses his job, which means that he and Julie are threatened with losing their adopted daughter because the adoption agency will only place children with financially secure families. Roger saves the day with an impassioned speech to the judge, and there is a brief return to comedy with the Nativity scene, before the final tragedy of Trina's death.
The main flaw of the film is not so much that it is excessively sentimental, but rather that the comic and tragic elements do not sit easily together. The switches from one to the other are often abrupt. The scriptwriters seem to have been aware of this problem, as the sentiment is sometimes downplayed. Trina's death, for example, is simply announced in a letter from Julie to the head of the adoption agency without any heart-wrenching deathbed scene. The ending of the film, in which Julie and Roger's marriage is saved when the adoption agency offer them another child to adopt, is a particularly implausible way of providing a "happy ending". That the loss of a child could have brought them so close to divorce within a few days suggests that there was something seriously wrong with their marriage in the first place, and the idea that their grief could be so completely and suddenly overcome by the adoption of another child seems a very unrealistic view of the psychology of loss and bereavement.
Despite my reservations, I have given this film a mark of six, partly because it is in parts very funny and partly because it is very professionally acted, particularly by Cary Grant, Irene Dunn and Beulah Bondi as the lady from the adoption agency. Grant is very good in the comic scenes; he was normally better at comedy than at serious drama, although there are exceptions such as his work with Hitchcock. My overall impression, however, was that it was an uneasy mixture of comedy and tragedy that did not quite hang together as a coherent whole. 6/10