Pennies from Heaven (1936)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by Jo Swerling, based on the novel by Katherine Leslie Moore
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Starring Bing Crosby, Madge Evans, Edith Fellows, Donald Meek, John Galludet, Louis Armstrong, Tom Dugan, and Nana Bryant

Features:

• Vintage trailers
  

Released by: Columbia-Tristar
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format

My Advice: Rent it, but be ready to shell down the dough for a special edition

Larry (Crosby) is a self-proclaimed troubadour. He even carries his own lute and can sing like an angel. However, like any self-respecting drifter, he has found himself in jail where it turns out one of his cell mates is going to the chair for murder. Before he takes his final walk, he asks Larry to hand deliver a message to a certain family. When Larry finds them, it turns out to be the relatives of the murder victim. The message is also a final gift from the convicted: his house in New Jersey. This turns out to be great timing since the family has just been evicted from their current residence and worse, their little girl, Susan (Evans), is on the verge of being put in an orphanage. So the family decides to build a restaurant up from nothing in the hopes to show the social worker that they can, indeed, provide a good home for Susan.

This movie really tugs at your heart strings. Larry is just a simple musician with a heart of gold. It's really not a surprise that Susan (the little girl) falls in love with him. After all, he's the father figure she's been missing. He even tucks her in at night. I guess there's a reason that this one has remained such a classic for all these years (other than the fact that all the songs in the movie are absolutely timeless). Crosby is perfect, but that's not that surprising. I guess he really had to do what came naturally to him: sing. Louis Armstrong is an interesting choice for the role he plays, but he does what is called for, which is to play a stereotypical black person in a 1930s film. That having been said, his musicianship is also called into play for this one, too.

The DVD has nothing on it but a couple of trailers for other movies. Which begs the question: how about including this classic flick's own trailer for posterity? It's a shame that the production company was only thinking of the advertising space and not about preserving as much about this film they could in a virtuously timeless format. I only hope that the original trailer for this film is not one of those pieces of celluloid that we are losing due to the inevitable chemical breakdown of the media. It would be a shame not to lost it.

Anyway, other than that, there is no commentary track, no interviews and no featurette or documentary. This is to be expected somewhat, since of the major cast and crew members, only Edith Fellows is still with us. But still, as Fox has shown recently, it's possible to grab one remaining cast member and some film historians and deliver some decent content. But alas. That having been said, you could do a lot worse than this one for a rainy day. Pick it up as a rental, but be ready to buy it if they ever release a special edition.