Pennies from Heaven

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN has an improbable story about a drifter (BING CROSBY) who plays the lute and sings for his supper at a nightclub he opens at The Haunted House Cafe. The house has been inherited by DONALD COOK and EDITH FELLOWS from a prisoner on death row who wills the house to them as atonement for having killed the girl's father and is turned into a café by Bing and his friends, including LOUIS ARMSTRONG who is the vocalist and trumpet player.

The main focal of the plot is Bing's relationship with bratty little Edith Fellows, who causes no end of trouble throughout and is the most irritating factor about the whole thing although she's meant to be amusing and cute. MADGE EVANS as a social worker brings some sense of practicality to the whole affair and DONALD COOK provides some good humor, but the script meanders all over the place.

Crosby makes the role of the drifter pleasant enough but his character is never quite believable. Only when the musical numbers are played does the film reach any real level of entertainment, particularly during the "haunted" number at the café featuring a skeleton dance while Louis Armstrong belts out the song.

This is a harmless trifle in Bing's career, on loan to Columbia before his big successes at Paramount, and mostly because he delivers a few songs in his unmistakable crooning style, particularly the title tune.

Bing is his usual amiable self, but the script is miserable. He is credited with giving Armstrong a break by insisting that he be given prominent billing, a breakthrough for Louis. They would appear in four films together throughout Crosby's career.

Bing Crosby is one of the few performers who while he performed in over 70 films while he was alive, was so talented he has now appeared as a performer in just as many after his death in archive footage. He was a very shrewd Businessman too. This film, released by Columbia, was really made by a production company partly owned by Bing. A lot of film historians forget how Democratic the earlier years of films were where often the actors owned their own productions before the studio system really took over in the late 1930's. The big stars like Crosby even later than this had the power to own their own films and get a piece of the box office.

This film has the major attraction of Crosby in his prime with plenty of support and a fine performance by Louis Armstrong who is one of the great musical performers of the era too. Directed by Norman Z McCleoud who is a comedy director with Monkey Business & Horsefeathers, 2 of the great Marx Brothers films already on his resume, this film flows along quite nicely. The script is light hearted and puts together just enough plot to get through all the great musical numbers.

This is the type of film that isn't made anymore but is great to see, especially since a lot of Crosbys work is very entertaining. This one holds up well even today after all these years.

Pleasant if meandering Bing Crosby vehicle casts him as a man unjustly jailed who is given a note to deliver by a condemned man. Out of prison, he tracks down the Smith family in New Jersey and discovers a lonely girl (Edith Fellows) who lives with her destitute grandfather (Donald Meek). On opening the note they realize the condemned man has left them a house. Crosby ambles along with them and becomes part of the family, much to the dismay of a nosy social worker (Madge Evans). Somehow it is decided that they will open a restaurant in the house and thus provide a steady income to satisfy the social worker. No one seems unduly concerned about school or the fact that a total stranger has moved into the household.

Not a lot of logic here but Crosby and Fellows are quite good. Evans seems a little ill at ease with her character. Meek is always good. Louis Armstrong shows up as a chicken thief and bandleader/singer at the restaurant. Nana Bryant is another social worker. George Chandler is a harried waiter. Nydia Westman has a nice scene as a maid with Crosby. Harry Tyler is the cheating ring-toss man, and Tom Dugan plays daredevil manager.

Not a great film but it has a few pleasant songs, including the title number, and Crosby continues his screen persona of easy-going and decent. Fellows is quite good as the sometimes bratty girl. Evans is very pretty--too bad she did get better films and parts.

Pennies from Heaven 1936 is a great film and has a wonderful scene with Louis Armstrong singing "Skeleton in the Closet" while chasing a skeleton all around the room. It works great for school kids on Halloween.Does anyone know if this movie is available on VHS or DVD for sale? If so where can I purchase it? Please email me

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (Columbia, 1936), directed by Norman Z. McLeod, no relation to the 1981 musical of that same title featuring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters, stars Bing Crosby, on loan from his home studio of Paramount, in a forgettable but likable story with a notable title tune that underscores the film opening credits, presenting pennies falling from the thundering clouds above bouncing to the wet ground below. Crosby's character of Larry Poole is a drifter who lives a day-to-day existence tossing a feather into the air and heading the direction where the feather goes. He also passes the time singing by songs with the use of a 13th century flute, an instrument occasionally mistaken for a guitar. His biggest dream in life is to go to Venice, Italy, and ride on the gondolas, which, at present, seems unlikely.

In the story's fade-in, Larry, serving time in prison on a supposed smuggling charge, with one more week to go before his released, is met by a man Hart (John Gallaudet), a condemned prisoner on his way to the electric chair to die for his crime, who wants Poole, the only man he trusts, to deliver a letter to a family named Smith of Middletown, New Jersey, and explains his reasons. After Poole grants him this last request, Hart is then escorted down his last mile through the green doors. Following this dramatic scene opener, quite unusual for a musical-comedy, finds the pardoned Larry drifting along to a carnival where he encounters a pre-teen but tough little girl (Edith Fellows) being cheated at a game booth by a slick barker (who charges a dime for a throw of six rings). Larry helps her to win her prize by letting her know how she's getting cheated and threatens the carnival barker that there will be a loud call of "Hey, rube!" if he doesn't come up with the prize. The girl in turn gets it. Larry then tells her, "Thank the nice man." Girl to barker: "Thank you ... YOU CROOK!" After making the acquaintance with Patsy and later her grandfather (Donald Meek), who are flat broke and in financial need, and learning that their last name is Smith, Larry finds that they are the Smiths he's been searching for. He then presents them with the letter in question. It is learned that Hart's last request was that the family of the man he killed (Patsy's father) should inherit a large country estate that once belonged to his family. Upon arrival to the old mansion via hayride, they have second thoughts when finding the run-down mansion might possibly be haunted. With the help of the positive-thinking Larry, he happens upon an idea of turning the old place into a roadside restaurant called the Haunted House Cafe. The second half of the story focuses on Susan Sprague (Madge Evans), a county welfare agent, who feels Patsy, an incorrigible child who has been skipping school, isn't being brought up in the right atmosphere, especially when Patsy is bonding with a man who had spent time in prison, thus, threatening to take her away.

Aside from Crosby's easy-going personality and his easy-listening crooning, Madge Evans' blonde beauty and Edith Fellows' temper tantrums controlled only by Crosby, whose "taming of the shrew" is through his singing, the supporting cast also features a very young Louis Armstrong as Henry, the hired hand, trumpeter and vocalist of the Haunted House Cafe; Nana Bryant as Mrs. Howard; Charles C. Wilson as the Warden; and character actress Nydia Westman appearing briefly as the landlady.

Nice tunes, compliments of songwriters Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston include: "So Do I" (sung by Bing Crosby); "Pennies From Heaven" (sung by Crosby to Edith Fellows during a thunder storm); "Skeleton in the Closet" (sung by Louis Armstrong); "Let's Call a Heart a Heart" (sung by Crosby to Madge Evans); "Pennies From Heaven" (reprise); "One, Two, Button My Shoe" (sung by Crosby and orphan children); "So Do I" and "One, Two, Button My Shoe" (reprise/finale).

As in most Crosby musicals of the 1930s and '40s, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is a likable production no different from the movies he has done over at his home studio at Paramount. Along with the film, young Edith Fellows, who resembles a youthful Jane Powell, in a performance that could have been played by another registered movie "brat" named Bonita Granville, is as forgotten as this movie itself. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN will go on record as her best known film work, for that her subsequent features, mostly for Columbia, have been minor programmers that remain hidden in the land of oblivion. Her chemistry with Crosby registers well here. Aside from the screen characters, the movie includes some interesting camera angles worth mentioning. One that stands in mind is the introductory scene between Crosby and Fellows as they are leaving the carnival. After she asks him what his name is, the camera focuses to the girl's point of eye-view from the bottom up as Crosby's character, appearing quite taller, looks down and answers her question. A similar such scene occurs later as Crosby sings to the tune of "So Do I" while Fellows does some street dancing to earn some extra money as the tenement people throw some loose change from their apartment windows above. While there are enough good songs to go around, only "Pennies from Heaven" remains legendary, earning an Academy Award nomination as Best Song of 1936, losing to "The Way You Look Tonight" from SWING TIME (1936).

Available on DVD and shown on Turner Classic Movies(TCM premiere: December 5, 2005), PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, which which runs 81 minutes, is worthy screen entertainment made palatable by its good songs and fine supporting cast. (***)