PENNY SERENADE, a superior 1941 melodrama, gave Cary Grant the first of his two Oscar nominations as Best Actor; the other coming three years later for None But The Lonely Heart. To that factoid add “only two! @#$%&*?” Here he co-starred with the terrific Irene Dunne for the third time (The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife) in a script from Morrie Ryskind (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door), produced & directed by George Stevens. *

The story of a married couple’s poignant and painful relationship is conveyed thru flashbacks cued by records, popular songs recalling distinct highs and lows of their life together. ‘Julie Gardiner’ (Dunne) and ‘Roger Adams’ (Grant) quick-meet & impulse-marry on New Year’s Eve, just as news reporter Roger accepts a high-prospect assignment in Tokyo. Julie, pregnant from their ‘honeymoon’ train tryst on the way to San Francisco, joins him, but the devastating 1923 earthquake in Tokyo ruins the job and hurts Julie badly enough that she loses the unborn child and can’t carry another. Moving back to a small town in California, where Roger opens a local paper, they adopt a child, but face a one-year trial to qualify as permanent parents. Despite financial woes, they succeed, but five years later tragedy returns and the marriage is tested to the breaking point.

Fencing with Ann Doran in one of her hundreds of credits

In the wrong hands, the setup could be fumbled into saccharine sentiment or manipulative pathos. But director Stevens humanistic touch is too keen for cheapness, and Ryskind’s screenplay is astute enough to layer the characters with behaviors and responses that the actors shade with their instincts, giving truth to the elements of affection, humor, hope, hurt, anger, resolve and forgiveness. As ever, Dunne is warm and strong. Somehow, Stevens slyly got one past the Production Code pisses by having Dunne and Grant share a bed— like actual human couples do. The two key supporting roles are handled by venerable pros Edgar Buchanan and Beulah Bondi. Two years into his career, Buchanan, 38, was building a rep with colorful turns in pictures like 1940’s Arizona and 41’s Texas; as ‘Applejack’, the couple’s closest friend, he has a wonderful scene where he deftly shows the clueless new parents the art of diapering. Bondi, 53, plays the thoughtful adoption agent ‘Miss Oliver’; contrast her steadfast kindness in this role with her same year’s harsh mountaineer matriarch in The Shepherd Of The Hills. 

Beulah Bondi, 1888-1981

But Cary surprises the most, proving his facility with comedy extended into drama, highlighted by his emotional appeal to a judge about to deny the couple’s permanent adoption. Those who know Grant from his humorous roles—kidding himself with athletic pratfalls and drily delivering deadpan one-liners while suavely filling out a tuxedo—will see a much different side when, voice cracking, he finesses defensive desperation out of heartbreak and hope.

“Well, you don’t know how badly my wife wanted a child. It wasn’t so important to me.  I don’t know, I suppose most men are like this but children never meant a great deal to me. Oh, I like them all right I suppose, but…Well, what I’m trying to say is, Your Honor, the first time I saw her she looked so little and helpless.  I didn’t know babies were so…so little.  And then when she took hold of my finger and held onto it, she just sort of walked into my heart Judge and she was there to stay.  I didn’t know I could feel like that.  I’d always been, well, kind of careless and irresponsible.  I wanted to be a big shot.  I couldn’t work for anybody, I had to be my own boss, that sort of thing. Now here I am standing in front of a judge pleading for just a little longer so I can prove to you that I can support a little child who doesn’t weigh quite 20 pounds.  It’s not only for my wife and me that I’m asking you to let us keep her judge, it’s for her sake too.  She doesn’t know any parents but us.  She wouldn’t know what had happened to her.  You see, there’s so many little things about her that nobody would understand the way Julie and I do.  We love her, Judge.  Please don’t take her away from us.  Look, I’m not a big shot now.  I’ll do anything, I’ll work for anybody.  I’ll beg, I’ll borrow, I’ll…  Please Judge, I’ll sell anything I’ve got until I get going again.  At least she’ll never go hungry and she’ll never be without clothes not while I’ve got two good hands to help me.”

Reviews approved, Cary drew peer applause and $3,200,000 at the box office ranked 72nd in 1941. It came out in April. Had it been scheduled to release after Dec. 7th and Pearl Harbor, it might not have gone out at all, given that a section of the movie is set in Japan during the peacetime 20’s, when that country and America were years away from a death match. Audiences of the era were familiar with the 1923 quake that had leveled Tokyo: it killed over 100,000 people. Stevens stages it in miniature, focusing only on the home Roger and Julie share.

With Ann Doran (29, sparkling as Julie’s pal ‘Dot’), Eva Lee Kuney (‘Trina’ at six) and Jane Biffle (Trina as a toddler). 120 minutes.

* Learning the ropes in 26 features since 1932, in 1937 Grant began a remarkable run of hits that ran 13 years until a bumpy patch started in 1950–and that was then succeeded by a second wind stirred in 1955 that breezed until he retired in 1966. Topper, The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, Gunga Din, Only Angels Have Wings, In Name Only, His Girl Friday, My Favorite Wife, The Philadelphia Story, Penny Serenade, Suspicion, The Talk Of The Town, Once Upon A Honeymoon, Mr. Lucky, Destination Tokyo, Arsenic And Old Lace, None But The Lonely Heart, Night And Day, Notorious, The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer, The Bishop’sWife, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, I Was A Male War Bride.