BING IN HOLLYWOOD: PENNIES FROM HEAVEN - PART TWO

The big draw of the film was the music. The entire score was written by the great team of Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke, who wrote many of Bing’s mid 1930s films. The title song “Pennies From Heaven” was nominated for an Oscar for best song, but it lost out to Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight” from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger’s film Swing Time. The July 24, 1936, recording by Bing Crosby on Decca Records topped the charts of the day for ten weeks in 1936 and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004. Bing Crosby also recorded the song in a performance with Louis Armstrong and Frances Langford with Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra on Decca and issued as a 12" 78rpm recording.

Crosby recorded the song again for his 1954 album Bing: A Musical Autobiography. The other songs fit well into the Bing mold of songs with the optimistic “One Two Button Your Shoe” and the romantic ballads: “So Do I” and “Let’s Call A Heart A Heart”. Next to the title song, my favorite number from the film was the Louis Armstrong solo “Skeletons In The Closet”. Do yourself a favor and listen to Armstrong’s Decca recording of the song. It is pure audio gold!

Looking back at the reviews from 1936, I am surprised they were not more positive. Variety wrote: 

"Pennies from Heaven may qualify as a fair grosser because of Crosby’s name, but basically it’s a weak picture with a story that has little movement and only a scattered few mild giggles. It’s spread pretty thin over 80 minutes, despite a good tuneful score which should be no handicap… Film won’t advance Crosby although Crosby may overcome its faults to some extent. Best individual impression is by Louis Armstrong, Negro cornetist and hi-de-ho expert. Not as an eccentric musician, but as a Negro comedian he suggests possibilities. He toots his solo horn to a nice individual score, plus his band chores. Crosby has a couple of songs that will be reprised into fair popularity..."

Despite what the critics thought of the film, the movie holds a special place in my heart. A generation divided my Grandfather and I, but when he played me Bing Crosby music, that age gap disappeared, and my Grandfather was one of the best friends I ever had. He instilled in me a love of Bing Crosby, and I can still remember where the scratches were on his Decca 78 of “Pennies From Heaven”. Sitting and watching the film with him in the early 1990s was a simple memory but one of my favorite times. Watching 1936’s Pennies From Heaven not only displays Bing Crosby rise to the top of his performing ability, but it brings back fond memories of my Grandfather. I consider a movie that does that 80 plus years after it was released to be a great movie indeed!

MY RATING: 10 OUT OF 10

BING IN HOLLYWOOD: PENNIES FROM HEAVEN - PART ONE

This past December, my Grandfather would have turned 90. As a tribute to him, I watched his favorite Bing Crosby movie 1936’s Pennies From Heaven. I remember for the longest time this film was not available on video and DVD, and my Grandfather was overjoyed when it was released. I personally think that this is the first Bing movie that showed the depth of Bing’s acting. The title song was also a favorite record of both my Grandfather and myself. Being raised in the Great Depression, to my Grandfather the song and the movie represented hope and optimism for better times to come.

This was Crosby’s first independent production jointly with Emanuel Cohen’s Major Pictures and he had a share in the profits. The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The movie was Bing’s most dramatic effort to date. In the film, Bing plays a sort of roving vagabond. The opening scene in the movie, find Bing incarcerated (not sure why), and he was visited by a fellow inmate going to the electric chair for a murder he committed. For a man on death row, the warden and guards are pretty relaxed on how they are treating this murderer. Anyways, he hands Bing a letter to deliver, and being a man of his word, Bing promises to deliver the letter. 

The letter is for the family of the man that convict murdered. The only family left is the murdered man’s daughter (Edith Fellows) and her grandfather (Donald Meeks). To make up for killing a man, the death row inmate gave the family keys to his rundown hideout. Being that the daughter and grandfather are pretty much homeless they decide to move into the house of the man that murdered their father/son. Bing wants to cut out as soon as he delivers the letter, but he gets involved in the life of the daughter and grandfather and the social worker (Madge Evans) that tries to make sure the daughter is cared for.

Of course, the star of the film is Bing; whose singing makes one forgets that he basically plays a hobo in this film! The great scene stealer in the film though was child star Edith Fellows. A noted child star of the 1930s, she later had a long second career on stage and television. Abandoned at age two months she was raised by her grandmother, initially in Charlotte, North Carolina, and pushed into show business early. She appeared with many of the greats of the 1930s like Bing, WC. Fields, and Tony Martin, but by the 1950s, stage fright had consumed her. She retired to roles in television and movies in the 1970s. However, seeing Edith in 1936’s Pennies From Heaven, you would never imagine she would have problems in life. Bing starred with many child stars through the years, but the relationship and chemistry between Bing and Edith Fellows was by far the most believable.

The whole cast of Pennies From Heaven was strong. Bing fought for his idol Louis Armstrong to have a role in the movie, and more than the normal stereotypical roles that African-Americans had to take in Hollywood in the 1930s. Although this was not the first time that a black performer was given prominent billing in a major Hollywood release (Paul Robeson had been billed fourth in that same year's Show Boat), special billing was given to Armstrong at the insistence of Bing Crosby, who also insisted on Armstrong's being hired for the movie. Rounding out the cast was the beautiful Madge Evans as the uptight social worker. It seems like that was the love story aspect of all Bing’s early films: laidback crooner falls for uptight socialite. Donald Meeks as the grandfather was perfectly cast. Meeks never made a bad appearance in a movie, and he appeared in over 100 films! TO BE CONTINUED...