On This Day in April - Posters and Lobby Cards.

 Big Brown Eyes - 3rd April, 1936:

This is the Night - 8th April, 1932:

Penny Serenade - 24th April, 1941:

                       

Penny Serenade (1941)

   "...there is not only that easy swing and hint of the devil in him, but faith and passion expressed..."

With Irene Dunne.

Penny Serenade - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"Penny Serenade is frankly a weeper, but it is not quite like any other film I can think of.  It has no preachment in the Over The Hill tradition; it has not the ambitious glucose of Mr. Chips; it is not revolutionary in a picture sense and I cannot imagine its material being put on in a play.  It needs only three or four characters for most of the telling and its idea is simply that of a young couple who can't have a baby and so adopt one which becomes the center and the anchor of their lives, and dies at six.  What now keeps them from going completely to pieces is that they are able to adopt another - and that is all of it.  An errant sub-theme could have been strengthened with good effect, I think, in the steadying down of the young newspaperman-husband by marriage, tragedy and life with the kid; but this is not sufficiently worked into the texture to figure in the end.  It remains a picture of the early years of marriage as they pass over so many a thousand Mr. and Mrs., so ordinary as to be terribly difficult to do. 

Cary Grant is thoroughly good, in some ways to the point of surprise, for there is not only that easy swing and hint of the devil in him, but faith and passion expressed, the character held together where it might so easily have fallen into the component parts of the too good, the silly, etc.  His scene with the judge is one of the rightly moving things in the picture.  Edgar Buchanan is the darling boy though, and runs quietly away with every scene he is in, simply by the depth of his reality as the stumbling, kindly friend of the family, absurdly thick-fingered and ill-at-ease in everything but the delicate operations of the press room or washing the baby or patching troubles or cooking.  It is what is known as a juicy part and usually squeezed like an orange, till it means nothing; here it is done with the right balance of humor, loyalty and love, and you will not forget Edgar Buchanan.  

This is a picture not spectacular for any one thing, and yet the fact of its unassuming humanity, of its direct appeal without other aids, is something in the way of pictures growing up after all; for to make something out of very little, and that so near at hand, is one of the tests of artistry." 

- Otis Ferguson, The New Republic

New Artwork by Rebekah Hawley at Studio36 -
Number 39 - Penny Serenade (Lobby Card Style)

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Quote From Today April 24 2022

On This Day April 24 2021

And the Winner is...!

Of all the praise and adulation that Cary Grant received during his film career, one award eluded him.

Although being nominated twice for an Academy Award, he never actually won one!

Grant had boycotted the Oscars for twelve years.

He did finally receive an Academy Award for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting, in 1970.

Frank Sinatra presented the Honorary Award.

Cary Grant did however appear in a number of films that were nominated for Academy Awards in various categories and some won too!

Listed below are all the Cary Grant films that had Oscar nominations...and winners!

BEST PICTURE
1932 - She Done Him Wrong
1937 - The Awful Truth
1940 - The Philadelphia Story
1941 - Suspicion
1942 - The Talk of the Town
1947 - The Bishop's Wife

BEST ACTOR
1940 - James Stewart - The Philadelphia Story (Winner)
1941 - Cary Grant - Penny Serenade
1944 - Cary Grant - None but the Lonely Heart

Nominated for Best Actor in Penny Serenade and None But the Lonely Heart.

BEST DIRECTOR
1937 - Leo McCarey - The Awful Truth (Winner)
1940 - George Cukor - The Philadelphia Story
1947 - Henry Koser - The Bishop's Wife

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1940 - Ruth Hussey - The Philadelphia Story
1944 - Ethel Barrymore - None But The Lonely Heart(Winner)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1937 - Ralph Bellamy - The Awful Truth
1937 - Roland Young - Topper
1946 - Claude Rains - Notorious

BEST ACTRESS
1937 - Irene Dunne - The Awful Truth
1940 - Katharine Hepburn - The Philadelphia Story
1941 - Joan Fontaine - Suspicion(Winner)

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS
1939 - Only Angels Have Wings

BEST SOUND RECORDING
1937 - Topper
1940 - The Howard's of Virginia
1942 - Once Upon a Honeymoon
1947 - The Bishop's Wife(Winner)
1962 - That Touch of Mink
1964 - Father Goose

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
1940 - The Howards of Virginia
1940 - My Favorite Wife
1941 - Suspicion
1942 - The Talk of the Town
1944 - None but the Lonely Heart
1946 - Night and Day
1947 - The Bishop's Wife
1957 - An Affair to Remember

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
1942 - The Talk of the Town
1955 - To Catch a Thief(Winner)
1957 - An Affair to Remember

BEST ART DIRECTION 
1938 - Holiday
1940 - My Favorite Wife
1942 - The Talk of the Town
1955 - To Catch a Thief
1959 - North by Northwest
1962 - That Touch of Mink

BEST FILM EDITING
1937 - The Awful Truth
1942 - The Talk of the Town
1944 - None but the Lonely Heart
1947 - The Bishop's Wife
1959 - North by Northwest
1964 - Father Goose

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
1953 - Dream Wife
1955 - To Catch a Thief
1957 - An Affair to Remember

BEST SONG
1936 - Suzy
1957 - An Affair to Remember
1958 - Houseboat
1963 - Charade

BEST WRITING FOR THE SCREEN (original story or screen play)
1937 - The Awful Truth
1940 - My Favorite Wife
1940 - The Philadelphia Story(Winner)
1942 - The Talk of the Town (Original Writing)
1942 - The Talk of the Town (Screen play)
1943 - Destination Tokyo
1946 - Notorious
1947 - The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer(Winner)
1959 - North by Northwest
1962 - That Touch of Mink
1964 - Father Goose

With Ingrid Bergman's Academy Award in 1957, that he received on her behalf for Best Actress in Anastasia(1956)

Presenting an Academy Award in 1958 with Jean Simmons.

It was to Sir Alec Guinness for "Bridge Over the River Kwai". 

She accepted the Oscar on his behalf.

Cary Grant was also honored with presenting Honorary Academy Awards to his fellow actors and friends.

Sir Laurence Olivier in 1979.

And to James Stewart in 1985.

Always the Winner!

My Favorite Film(s) of the 1940's...In Second Place!

Wow! This is was such a hard decade to pick only one film!

So close seconds...

My Favorite Wife (1940)....Brilliant pairing with Irene Dunne, again!

Penny Serenade (1941)....with Irene Dunne again! Who can forget the scene in the judges office?

None But the Lonely Heart (1944)....With Ethel Barrymore as Ma.

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947)....Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple, "You remind me of a man..."

Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House (1948)...Again with Myrna Loy..."For thirteen hundred doillars they can live in a house with three bathrooms and rough it!"

I Was A Male War Bride (1949)....With Ann Sheridan...That wig!!!