this movie is boring beyond belief. i think the worse part was Edith Fellows...i would have left her in the orphanage. bratty not very cute and over acting she just made me cringe. Bing Crosby is alright but the songs he sings are forgettable and too bland. what was Donald Meek doing there.....they could have invented a non existing grandpa and would have saved on pay roll. the lead actress Madge Evans very ordinary. the story line is predictable and you just cant wait till the darn film to end. I am a BING fan but he should have dropped this dud. as for Edith fellows for sure her role called for her to be on the bratty side but she wasn't lovable in any ways and i felt no sadness when she was crying in the orphanage. miscast all the way.

"Pennies From Heaven" is not a particularly deep film and the film is filled with lots of music. Because of this, I might easily have predicted I wouldn't like it--as these are the sort of things I usually don't enjoy. However, I can happily say that because the film turned out to be a lot of fun AND the music was light and enjoyable.The film, oddly, starts on death row! An inmate about to be executed asks to see another prisoner and this request is granted. He wants to see Bing Crosby--a man you just can't imagine being in prison! And, it turns out they don't even know each other. Because of this, the condemned man asking Crosby to do him a favor seems pretty odd, but he agrees. He is to locate the family of the murdered man and give them a deed for a home--a small way the condemned man can try to make amends.Eventually, Bing does find the family--which turns out to be a child and her grandfather (Donald Meek). They are is trouble--without money AND a social worker (Madge Evans) breathing down their necks--they want to put the child in an orphanage! Well, Bing takes to the kid and makes it his job to keep this from happening. Because of this, there is a lot of friction between him and Evans--though you know that the cliché is that they'll eventually fall in love.There's a lot more to the story than this. It's all quite predictable but also pretty nice family viewing. Some might balk at it and think it's a bit sappy. I can understand this, but also occasionally like this sort of thing. Well-acted, nice music and a nice directorial touch--it's one musical I actually liked!

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 (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. (***)