La chanson à deux sous

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.

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

Bing Crosby plays a drifter serving a stretch in prison when he's asked by a condemned inmate to deliver a letter to the family of the man the inmate killed ("Anybody that can sing sappy, sentimental songs in prison wouldn't double cross a guy taking his last walk"). When he's released, he fulfills his promise and delivers the letter to a family of two -- a befuddled old man and his precocious granddaughter. He takes an immediate liking to these two and wants to help them, even though he would also like to get back on the road. He also finds himself at odds with a pretty social worker whose job it is to see the young girl is properly cared for.

An enjoyable bit of fluff with nice comedy and some mild tugging at the heartstrings. Crosby is likable and has a good chemistry with everybody he shares the screen with. He croons several tunes, including the title one. Child actress Edith Fellows is wonderful here, never cloying but just the right amount of corny to be appreciated. Donald Meek is fun as the grandfather. Madge Evans has a thankless role she does her best with. Louis Armstrong is terrific in a small part. Love the haunted house and carnival scenes. It's not a challenging movie but it is a pleasant one. Fun for the whole family, as they say. It should also hold some interest for those who like Depression-era material (Townsend Plan, anyone?). Crosby fans will, of course, love it.

Bing Crosby was loaned out from Paramount to Columbia for this film and Columbia did no better for him in the way of budget than Paramount. Again relying on Crosby's personality to bring in the box office, if anything Columbia probably spent less money than Paramount on his films.

What they did do was give Crosby a good supporting cast, a role tailor- made for him and a good score of tunes to sing, topped by one of his immortal hits, the title tune Pennies from Heaven. This was the second of 15 movie songs introduced by Bing that were nominated for the Academy Award as best song when that award actually meant something.

Crosby's Larry Poole is a more delineated character than most of the ones he did in the 1930s. He's asked by a prisoner who's on death row to look up the family of a man he murdered and give them the key to an old house that the prisoner owned. He meets up with the family which consists of juvenile Edith Fellows and grandfather Donald Meek. He also tangles with social worker Madge Evans, but in the end all his righted.

In the real world I can't believe that civil servant Evans would ever take up with a vagabond character like Larry Poole, definitely not in this day and age. But if he's played by Bing Crosby, well.........

The film has one other interesting feature. Donald Meek mentions to Crosby a few times that while he's down on his luck now, he expects to come into a regular source of income soon. Finally Bing asks just what is this expected windfall and Meek replies, "The Townsend Plan."

Today's audience would not get that dated bit of humor, but the Townsend Plan was the brainstorm of a Doctor Francis Townsend who was a retired physician who came up with a scheme in which the elderly were to be paid in scrip (in other words money that had to be spent) and then that money would be taxed through the sales which would in turn pay for another month's scrip and so on and so on. At the time of the filming of Pennies from Heaven this plan had a lot of followers in the country which was in a depression.

Of course Townsend never got his plan passed, but a lot of historians credit him with raising such a fuss over what we did with our elderly that the result was Social Security.

One of Bing's best.