Pennies from Heaven

I was ten years old and this was one of Bing Crosby's earliest films. Oh how I used to enjoy all his films! I believe this is the first film he did with the great Louis Armstrong. What a joy and thrill to all that great music; same for Birth of the Blues.

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.

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.

Mr. Doyle's poor review is questionable at best. This film is a delight from beginning to end. Edith Fellows does NOT play a brat, but a determined and pleasant young girl who can use a little guidance. The songs are fun and Bing and Edith make a great team! If this was a crappy movie, the DVD wouldn't cost $30!! Madge Evans is a bit of a pain, but that's the role she has to play and does it well. Donald Meek is typically good, but Edith steals the show in the first scene at the carnival. Funny when her line 'Thank you, you CROOK! appears near the film's first few minutes. I;m giving this a 9 out of 10. I don't know where some of the rural scenes were filmed, but the interiors were filmed at the old General Service Studios in Hollywood.

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