Far from the comedy of The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife, this pairing of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne pulls out all the sentimental stops to get you sad and keep you sad. <br /><br />A Penny Serenade is the chronicle of a marriage between the two World Wars of the last century. Cary is an aspiring newspaperman who meets Irene while she's working in a record shop. They marry and Cary takes an assignment in the Far East.<br /><br />The Japanese earthquake of the Twenties causes Irene to have a miscarriage and she can't have any other kids. They come home and this time adopt a little girl. A few years later, she falls ill suddenly and dies. The strain is too much for both of them.<br /><br />I think you get the idea where this is going, but under George Stevens's skillful direction Penny Serenade remains sentimental without descending into the maudlin. It's also due to the skill of the leads.<br /><br />Cary Grant got his first of two trips to the Oscar sweepstakes with this film. This was due to a great scene he has with a family court judge as he pleads for him and Irene to keep their child. There couldn't have been a dry eye in any theater this was playing in back in 1941. Grant lost the award to Gary Cooper as Sergeant York.<br /><br />In the supporting players mention must be made of Edgar Buchanan and Beulah Bondi. Buchanan is Grant's good friend who comes to work as a pressman when Grant starts a small town newspaper after coming home from the Orient. He has a wonderful scene showing the new parents how to change a baby's diaper. Beulah Bondi plays the wise and sympathetic head of an orphanage who's a very shrewd judge of people and the qualities they need for parenting.<br /><br />A lot of similarities between this and the 1970s film Pete and Tillie with Carol Burnett and Walter Matthau.