Penthouse Serenade

"Penthouse Serenade" is a short film that is a 'Soundie'...an early sort of music video that was played on specially built jukeboxes from 1940-1947. These jukeboxers were unusual because they not only played music but video...like music videos of the modern era. And, if you are curious about this an other soundies, you might want to buy yourself a copy of "Soundies the Ultimate Collection"...a 4 disc set of about 200 of these films.

This Soundie features Johnny Downs and Gale Storm in a cutesy song which finds him dressed as a bellboy and she a maid. It's very nice...but also a tad dull as the music sounds a lot like that played by Lawrence Welk...and I still suffer flashbacks about when my grandparents made me watch his show! Watchable but not great.

Johnny Downs and Gale Storm sing and dance to the title song in this soundie.

It's one of thousands of soundies, short musical films created from the late 1930s through the middle of the 1940s to play on a device known as a Mills Panoram. You may think of them as video jukeboxes, or precursors to music videos. You could find them in bars, and a dime in the machine would bring you one of ten songs. Many established performers performed on them, and they were often the first films of future stars like Doris Day and Ricardo Montalban.

It's a typical big-band arrangement, and the leads are quite winsome, especially Miss Storm in her short skirt and black stockings.