Penny Serenade

Fair warning: Penny Serenade is a tearjerker. It was on my mind after Baby Boom, because...babies! I had fond (and partly mistaken) memories of Penny Serenade, black and white, first viewed on tv late at night, interrupted by commercials. I loved it then, and I love it now. The hoopla copy had a good soundtrack (volume-wise) and a few vertical slits or seams in some of the frames, giving it a marvelous vintage quality. And now I may be hooked forever on free movies via hoopla via my library card.

I had remembered a sweet, sweet moment when a man gives a baby a bath. It takes as long as it takes, as does a new mother's fumbling with getting her baby's clothes off for the bath, and that was a delightful part of the movie, real time scenes. And the baby's sweet, sweet face! But I thought it was Cary Grant giving the bath, and that made no sense. I had conflated the bath scene with a later scene where he gives a great speech with the baby (a year older) sitting in a giant chair. You'll like it.

This movie has everything: romance, travel, an earthquake, journalism, comedy, New Year's Eve, and old-fashioned records. In a way, it's the story of a marriage unfolding through memories evoked by songs played on an old-fashioned record player. I don't want to say too much more, so you can have the surprises I had on first viewing. And so you can cry. This time I started crying when the inspector saw the child's room in the apartment upstairs from the newspaper office. And just kept crying, between smiles.