Pennies from Heaven

Plot synopsis:
As the opening credits roll, the audience hears "The Clouds Will Soon Roll By", a typical Great Depression-era type lyric, while the audience watches a rain storm. The time and place is set as 1934 Chicago.
As the action begins, an alarm clock wakes Arthur Parker (Steve Martin), who rolls over to wake his wife, Joan (Jessica Harper), by trying to interest in some early morning sex, but his shy, practically frigid wife turns him down. Arthur is frustrated by his wife's disinterest in sex. While he dresses for work, he lip-syncs "I'll Never Have to Dream Again" to a female voice (Connee Boswell). The song continues during breakfast with Arthur singing for himself. In addition to Arthur's sexual disappointments, he is further frustrated because his wife will not finance the start of his own business.
Arthur leaves home that morning and threatens never to return. He goes to a bank to borrow enough money to start a sheet music store. With no collateral, the banker (Jay Garner) refuses to loan him any money. During moments when his dreams are shattered, Arthur shuts out reality by escaping into Busby Berkeley-like musical production numbers. In this particular instance, Arthur and the banker lip-synch the lyrics to "Yes, Yes! (My Baby Said Yes)", performed by Sam Browne and the Carlyle Cousins. They are joined by several chorus girls who tap dance and toss large cardboard coins. During the song Arthur is showered with bags of coins and the song develops into a huge production number complete with over-heard camera shots of dancers in kaleidoscopic patterns and the dancers reflected in a highly polished, mirror-like floor. During one sequence, the banker and Arthur are dressed in cut-away suits and dance with a chorus line of girls.
The scene changes to Arthur driving down the road where he picks up a hitch hiker, the Accordion Man (Vernal Bagneris).
Later, while Arthur sells some sheet music to the owner of Barrett's Music Shop, Eileen (Bernadette Peters) enters. Even though she is a shy, rather plain school teacher, Arthur expresses his instant attraction to her by singing "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?"(performed by Bing Crosby). During the number, Eileen is converted into a lovelier version of herself and performs a tap dance routine. She leaves the store without paying much attention to Arthur.
As she walks down the street, Eileen hears the Accordion Man singing "Rock of Ages" and gives him a contribution, which prompts him to launch into a spirited rendition of "The Old Rugged Cross".
Soon, the hitch hiker devours some food at Jimmy's Diner, an Italian-American food joint. He and Arthur are sitting together in a booth, but Arthur isn't eating. As he gives his meal to the enigmatic bum, the diner walls disappear and Arthur walks out into the rain and dances to a violin solo of "Pennies from Heaven" (the violin soloist is uncredited; the song is sung by Arthur Tracy, who was called The Street Singer). The rain drops become coins raining down as he dances in front of a huge backdrop collage depicting various scenes from the Great Depression.
After the song, Arthur gives the Accordion Man a quarter, leaves the diner and heads for Eileen's farm. He had learned she was a school teacher, so he asked some children where she lived. Although Eileen is frightened at first, she listens as he expresses his infatuation with her.
The scene changes to a bar where a couple of other salesmen are lamenting the depression economics, but Arthur, smiling, claims he's doing great (referring more to his progress with Eileen than his sales). He and the other salesmen perform a vaudeville act-type rendition of "It's the Girl" (performed by the Boswell Sisters with the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra) which includes a tap dance routine and Arthur performing a short banjo solo.
The following scene shows Eileen reading the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Rapunzel" to her school class. Suddenly, the children are dressed in all white and their desks become small white grand pianos on which they accompany their teacher as she sings "Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You" (performed by Phyllis Robins with Nicholas Orlando's Orchestra). The children also tap dance on top of their pianos. Back to reality, the school's principal scolds them for making so much noise.
Arthur is waiting outside when school is dismissed, to drive Eileen home. During their visit, Arthur makes the mistake of saying, "My wife", but he quickly tries to cover up by claiming his wife was killed in a motorcycle accident. Then, he plays on Eileen's sympathy by asking her to take the pain away.
When he returns home to his wife, Joan gives into one of Arthur's sexual fetishes by putting lipstick on her nipples. Once he entices her to reveal them to him, she cries and asks "Are they as nice as hers?" He lies to her and claims that even though he has been tempted when he is out on the road, he has refrained.
We hear the radio play "Let's Put Out the Lights (and Go to Sleep)" while Arthur talks about wanting to play the sax and have his own dance band.
The next morning, Arthur is happy he's had sex with his wife and she has finally agreed to finance his record shop. While he dresses, Joan sings "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" (performed by Rudy Vallee and His Connecticut Yankees). During the song, she picks up a pair of scissors to stab him in the back, but it is only an illusion -she is actually still in bed. It is what she would like to do if she had the nerve.
After some time passes, Eileen is fired from her teaching position because she is pregnant. Meanwhile, Arthur has opened his record store but is languishing with few customers. One evening he drives to a bridge where he sees a girl walking towards him. He speaks to her and determines that she is blind. He offers to walk with her (with an implied sexual context) and compliments her beauty.
Later, he goes to Eileen, who informs him she is going to have his baby. She forces him to write down his address so that she'll know where to find him. He promises to do what he can to help. One of the things that attracts him most about Eileen is that she isn't shocked by his sexual suggestions; rather, she seems to relish them. In this instance, he tells her about a man giving an elevator operator $20 to turn his back so he and his date can have sex. When she likes the idea, Arthur is thrilled. She sings "I Want to Be Bad" (performed by Helen Kane, the Boop-Boop-a-Doop girl) as they act out their sexual fantasy in an elevator. In the following scene, the blind girl Arthur had met earlier stumbles over the bum Arthur had picked up earlier in the film. Although the film audience doesn't see the act, the bum rapes and kills the girl.
Later, as Arthur returns from his tryst with Eileen, he happens upon the crime scene and sees the blind girl dead. We see a Camel cigarette package that will later be used as evidence against Arthur. During this sequence, we hear a reprise of "The Clouds Will Soon Roll By" playing in the background. As Arthur leaves the crime scene, he almost runs over the vagrant who committed the crime.[I could be wrong, but the way I remember it, Arthur does hit the vagrant, killing him and throwing his body into some bushes where presumably it is never found--isaiah53-5].Back home, Arthur is so shaken by what he has seen that he promises Joan that he will change and will be good in the future.
Eileen wanders into a bar where she orders lemonade, but Tom (Christopher Walken), a stylish pimp, talks her into adding gin to her lemonade. She offers herself to him for $5 and tells him her name is Lulu. Tom and three of his cronies perform a song and dance routine to "Let's Misbehave" (performed by Irving Aaronson and His Commanders). During the number, a couple of elderly whores join Tom and he and Lulu tap dance on top of the bar.
Soon, Arthur realizes his life with Joan is over. The film audience sees Arthur, Joan and Eileen dressed in sailor outfits sing "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (performed by Walt Harrah, Gene Merlino, Vern Rowe, Robert Tebow and Al Vescovo) into a radio microphone.
One evening as Arthur is leaving his record store he hears Eileen laughing, goes over to her and offers to buy her a cup of coffee. During their conversation, she reveals that she aborted the baby. When he takes her to his record shop, she further reveals that she has become a prostitute and enjoys it. Arthur admits that he should have held on to her, but he was too obsessed with owning a record store. Once they both realize they are still in love with each other, they decide to run away together. Before they go, they smash all the records in the store except for "Pennies from Heaven." Arthur won't allow her to break that one.
The police question Joan and tell her that Arthur closed the store and was seen at a bar with a prostitute. When they tell her that her husband is a suspect in a murder case, she reveals that he traveled to Chicago and back at the time of the murder.
One evening, Eileen and Arthur go to movies to see "Follow the Fleet" (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers perform an excerpt of "Lets Face the Music and Dance" from the film). Soon, Arthur mimes Astaire and he and Eileen walk up on the stage in front of the screen and dance like Fred and Ginger. Suddenly, Arthur and Eileen are transformed into a black and white film sequence in which they dance with a chorus of male dancers. At the end of the dance, the males canes become the bars of a jail cell.
When they leave the movie theater, Eileen and Arthur see a newspaper headline about the blind girl being murdered. As Arthur feverishly drives away, he tries to get Eileen to believe he is innocent of the crime. Abruptly, Eileen tells Arthur goodbye. He asks if she is running out on him, to which she replies, "Not fun, is it?"
The next morning, while Arthur is trying to get his car started, the cops arrive. He runs, but they catch him. Even though he pleads his innocence, he is convicted. At the gallows, he quotes the verse of "Pennies from Heaven" and then sings the chorus (in this instance, Steve Martin is actually singing).
As Eileen looks out a window, Arthur, still dressed in his prison clothes, comes running back calling her name. She can't understand why he is there: he has just witnessed his execution. He says, "Whoever said you could stop a dream? We couldn't go through all that without a happy ending." That line leads into the finale, which is a huge Busby Berkeley-type production number to "The Glory of Love". The number opens with a stage full of chorus girls who are seated and kicking their legs. Soon, Eileen and Arthur, dressed in new costumes, enter and sing (in this instance, both Bernadette Peters and Steve Martins own voices are heard). Towards the end of the number a rainbow appears in the sky and the camera pans up through the clouds to a fair sky and a full moon.
During the end credits, renditions of "Pennies from Heaven" and "Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You" are heard.

Tags: tragedy, psychedelic, depressing, romantic

Review:
Audiences of 1981 did not seem to understand the concept of a depression-era musical, where the actors lip-synch to original recording from the in 1930s in elaborate fantasies that are far removed from the actual world in which they inhabit.
Renowned dancer Vernel Bagneris is mesmerizing as the film's most ambiguous character, and his density-defying dance to Arthur Tracy's heartbreaking rendition of the title song is one of my favorite moments in any film.Even more impressive is tough guy actor Christopher Walken's then-unexpected prowess on the dance floor, as he delivers a riotously funny and surprisingly sexy striptease to Irving Aaronson's "Let's Misbehave." In this sequence, Walken pulls off the difficult hat trick of satisfying both seasoned viewers and film neophytes, while still managing to leave both groups wanting more.
I have watched this movie with two friends, and the first yawned everytime the actors opened their mouths to lip sync the beautiful and strange Depression era songs.
I never saw the BBC original, but fondly remember Potter's "The Singing Detective." I can understand that Hoskin's Cockney optimism would fit Pennies' lead character to a tee, but Martin gives us a hint of the fragility of the song pusher's world, like Willy Loman, out there on a shoeshine, and for Martin, a song.The film is innovative and definitely not your father's musical, and the songs, done up not in 1981 over-orchestration but in that tinny sound of early vinyl, just blow me away.
Much has already been written here saying positive things about Pennies From Heaven, but the best reason for the excellence of the film lies in the fact that the screenplay was written by Dennis Potter.
There is so much more to this story than can be told in a single film.Potter wrote what I consider the two most brilliant series ever on television, Pennies From Heaven starring Bob Hoskins and The Singing Detective starring Michael Gambon.
On the other hand, the cast of Pennies is a powerhouse of musical talent with Bernadette Peters and Christopher Walken and the surprisingly good Steve Martin.
(Disney put out almost all of the them.)  But for a good musical with real actors, I can only remember movies like Jonathan Demme's "Stop Making Sense" which is more a concert movie than a musical; "Bizet's Carmen" which is more filmed opera; and "Amadeus," and that's going back more than fifteen years.Where are the talents that could create new musical happenings in the movies?
If there is a movie musical that suggests what possibilities the right people with a good idea and the talent can draw from the tradition, it's "Pennies from Heaven."  This is a stunning work of movie art.
To find musical numbers this evocative, you need to go back to something like "Top Hat."  It's a supernal pleasure just recalling Vernel Bagneris slow-dancing in a shower of scintillating tokens or how surprised I was at the dexterity of Christopher Walken's hoofing or how close to Steve Martin's Arthur I felt when he opens his mouth and out pops Connie Boswell's haunting refrain.I cannot deny that I find the "reality" Dennis Potter has created jarring, and by the time, Arthur paints rings around his revolted wife Joan's nipples, you feel director Herbert Ross ("Goodbye, Mr. Chips") should have spared Joan--and us--this indignity with a more discreet camera setup.
The state of the musical may be to some on its last breath, but with "Pennies from Heaven" to look back on, it seems to be saying "All is not lost."  If the right people come together, there are wonderful things to imagine on the horizon..
This had to have been one of the first times that Steve Martin was allowed to show that he is so much more than just some guy with an arrow through his head, a fact that has been demonstrated time and time again over the past 20 years.This film physically depicts the depression era in beautifully muted tones and powerfully evokes the desperate feelings of people trying to make ends meet during hard times.
Martin and Peter's turn at Fred and Ginger was well beyond adequate and Walken's tap dance number is worth the price of admission.I watched this movie the other evening after not having seen it for several years.
Steve Martin, in a fair dramatic acting turn, plays a sex-obsessed sheet-music salesman in Chicago with no conscience who cheats on his frigid wife with a schoolteacher, later becoming involved in a murder investigation.
Jessica Harper (as the cold-fish wife) is every married man's nightmare: the bride-turned-shrew; Bernadette Peters is somewhat more sympathetic as the lover, and gets to utilize her natural Kewpie doll-ness to fantastic effect in the musical numbers.
The extravagant showstoppers, fantasy sequences designed like mini Busby Berkeley movies, are breathlessly intricate and exciting to watch, but they provide little emotional subtext for what's happening in the real world (I don't know if original creator Dennis Potter meant it or not, but the material plays like "Up the Sandbox" with music).
Sheet music salesman Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) can't get any love from his wife Joan (Jessica Harper) both in the bedroom and in the bank book.
A desperate Eileen falls into the arms of Tom the pimp (Christopher Walken).This is a sad depressing movie juxtaposed by the bright shiny surreal song and dance show.
Despite both being written (at least officially) by Dennis Potter, the brilliant TV writer, the movie feels essentially like a greatest hits package, taking the highlights of the miniseries, and making a film out of it.
Each of the big, sometimes complex, musical numbers is a look inside one of the character's heads, showing how they perceive the 1930s Depression Era world around them.
Steve Martin's Arthur is a bizarre, almost unredeemable amoral man who creates a pretend morality in the vision of the music he loves:  he claims to listen to the words, that he is a pure romantic, but the reality of his actions constantly opposes this.
The film is set in Depression-era America with Martin as a sheet music salesman who lives day to day through music and dreams.
The dance routines are all totally different and very entertaining, from the opening bank skit, to the kids in the classroom to Christopher Walken's striptease to Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters imitating Astaire & Rogers.
The dancing is good and the songs are great: catchy and fun.Story-wise, Martin ("Arthur Parker") plays a boorish, profane, lying and just plain unlikeable character.
Too bad, because with a more appealing story a lot more people would have been treated to the great musical numbers in this movie..
Story is about a sheet music salesman named Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) and its set in the depression era.
Walken was taught at a young age to be a song and dance man and as far as I know its the only time he has shown his real talent on film.
He meets a repressed but adventurous school teacher, and depression really sets in for the viewer.The movie is based on the strange and wonderful Dennis Potter BBC television show from 1978 (which I'm in the process of watching).
In the Herbert Ross version, Steve Martin plays Arthur, Bernadette Peters the school marm and Jessica Walters the wife.The movie has some great moments, but for me those moments are all wrapped up in the big production numbers.
Garner plays a fat, complacent, middle aged banker who turns Martin down for a loan...but then in Arthur's fantasy they break into lip sync song and dance while the banker showers Arthur with money.
The film concerns the three-sided relationship between Arthur Parker, a sheet-music salesman during the depression years of the thirties, his wife Joan and his mistress Eileen.
Whenever the characters break into song, however, the scene changes and we are transported into the world of 1930s Hollywood musicals with their extravagant song-and-dance numbers.
From the brilliant mind of Dennis Potter (check out The Singing Detective for his most brilliant work), this movie juxtaposes the movie musicals of the 1930's with the depression-time reality of the period for an emotionally complex film.
When the characters in the movie want to expound on their feelings, they break into musical numbers.
The actors including light-footed Steve Martin and a surprising Christopher Walken (who had studied dance but sadly never got to use it in a movie again) carry off the musical numbers spectacularly and unlike the 30's musicals also suffer bad moods and depression unlike anything Fred and Ginger ever did.
Based upon writer Dennis Potter's British TV miniseries of the same name, director Herbert Ross leads a game Steve Martin through the paces as Arthur Parker, a traveling song-sheet salesman coping with the curses of financial failure of 1930s work life and a milquetoast wife (Jessica Harper) at home.
Throughout this fascinating picture, Martin "dreams away" some absolutely stunning musical numbers against the amazing set designs of Richard MacDonald and "James Bond" production designer Ken Adam not by actual singing, but by licensing tunes from the era.
As a performance, the old saw about the clown crying on the inside is really at play here - Martin ALWAYS gives 100% in any film he's in, and this one required channelling every bit of physical and mental agility he had earned in his career to this point into this serio-comic essay.I can't say enough great things about this film other than a great big "bravo!": "Pennies From Heaven" is an important, defining film in the careers of all involved.
Pennies at once mimics, edifies, and ridicules the musical genre as the story weaves through comedy, drama, and tragedy only to capriciously produce a happy ending in order to present another big musical number.Steve Martin's character Arthur lives in a fantasyland of musical numbers even though he is only a lowly sheet music salesmen.
The music turns from seductive too lascivious as Eileen and Arthur act out the elevator scene while in real life she undresses for him to watch.Another truly insightful performance by Christopher Walkens pimp character Tom, as he woes the wayward Eileen into the business of the burlesque.
A beautiful voice emanates from his character's mouth as he gyrates upon the pool table and slides along the bar.A final number that puts a black and white Arthur and Eileen into the roles of Fred and Ginger and perform `Let's Face The Music And Dance' in an exact replica of the set they harmonized together on.
But Potter utilizes the good qualities of the musicals he admires and conjures characters and numbers while fitting the best songs into a narrative of his own referent creation.
Under the glossy production design and snappy musical numbers, there's a very dark center to the film, as its characters struggle through the Great Depression and their own desperation.
Maybe it's this quality that resulted in the film being a box office bomb upon its release.Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and especially Christopher Walken do smashing work in this movie.
Potter) about a married couple who make love too much few during the Depression Era. It is may be the ineffable Steve Martin best performance on the screen.
Can he win her or can his wife manage to be the woman he wants?I love old 1930s musicals, so you'd think I'd be the perfect person to watch "Pennies From Heaven".
The only way a new version would succeed would be if Potter's scenario was given a different interpretation that would provide a new perspective on the story of Depression-era salesman Arthur Parker's passionate belief in the sunny lyrics of the songs he markets despite his bleak life.
Only Bernadette Peters as Eileen Everson and Christopher Walken as the pimp Tom contribute notable performances that measure up to the original miniseries.But Steve Martin in the central role of Arthur Parker is the film's greatest liability.
His efforts are earnest but he fails to capture the character's essence.If the feature version was completely original, it would emerge as a fairly successful dramatization, save for Martin's miscasting, of the disturbing clash between musical fantasy and Depression-era reality.
This musical starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters is outstanding, weird, and unlike any other film.The movie is based on Dennis Potter's ("The Singing Detective") BBC musical of the same name that tells the story of a Depression-era sheet music salesman.
This is jarring at first, but once the movie begins its big, outstanding production numbers, you accept it as you get lost in the spectacle.Steve Martin plays the luckless salesman married to a frigid, unstable wife (Jessica Harper, in the movie's best performance.) While on a sales trip, me meets a proper school teacher played by Bernadette Peters and pursues her lustily.
These scenes are quite fantastically broken up by wonderful production numbers that are some of the best in the history of film musicals.You must see Christopher Walken as a vicious pimp burst into a song and dance number.
The "Let's Face the Music" dance-sequence has always stuck in my mind as truly poignant and dramatic.Now that I am more familiar with Edward Hopper, it interests me to see how many of his paintings have been re-created here; I recognized Nighthawks and New York Movie...can anyone point out others?.
Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters are both terrific, the Busby Berkeley-like dance scenes alone are worth the price of the movie and to see Christopher Walken sing and dance is, well, amazing.
In the 1930s a struggling sheet music salesman (Steve Martin) tries to escape his dreary existence with his prudish wife (Jessica Harper) to pursue his dream and a cute schoolmarm (Bernadette Peters).
Vernel Bagneris plays a homeless accordion player while Christopher Walken is on hand as a pimp."Pennies from Heaven" (1981) is a drama/musical based on the 1978 British mini-series and written by the same guy.
Martin is his usual comical self, but the drama is definitely not a comedy and contains some seriously unsavory moments."Pennies from Heaven" was the precursor to musicals like "Chicago" (2002) and "Nine" (2009), but those films have superior reality-based stories and far better women, especially "Chicago" as far as the women go.
Although the movie as a whole doesn't quite come together, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981) is a unique film with a lot to like about it.
The musical numbers are impressive, the vintage tunes are great, Peters and Walken in particular give standout performances, and director Herbert Ross stylishly quotes famous urban paintings like Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks".
Every musical number in 'Pennies from Heaven' takes place in a setting somewhat displaced from reality, on the edge of the characters' tongues but never quite in the open.
Herbert Ross's adaptation of Dennis Potter's musical of the same title has nothing to do with the song, aside from its use in the movie.
Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters (his co-star in "The Jerk") play a salesman and teacher, respectively, who fall in love in Depression-era Chicago.One of the movie's notable characteristics is that it was Martin's first serious role.
Throughout both films, characters will routinely break out into lipsinking popular songs from the 20's and 30's and indulge in imaginary dance numbers.
The 1981 film attempts to spoof the musical movies of the Thirties, like those of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and those directed and/or choreographed by Busby Berkeley.
PopCultureThoughts.Com. There are few movies quite as original as "Pennies from Heaven." Set during the Great Depression, the movie follows Steve Martin as a failed sheet-music salesman who loses himself in musical fantasies in order to deal with his reality.
Sheet music salesman Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) hates his job and is married to a frigid unloving wife (Jessica Harper).
Christopher Walken stops the show by lip syncing (and tap dancing) to "Let's Misbehave".Casting Martin and Peters in this was a mistake.
A conceptually dazzling musical, adapted by Dennis Potter from his BBC series, which juxtaposes the grim reality of Depression-era life with the fantasy of popular song.Steve Martin is a pipe-dreamer and travelling sheet music salesman who thinks about sex once every one second, leaving his frigid wife (Jessica Harper) in the lurch and a timid spinster (Bernadette Peters) up the duff.
A critical box-office fiasco directed by Herbert Ross (THE GOODBYE GIRL 1977, California SUITE 1978), PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is a Depression-era musical, alternates between a harsh reality and the dreamlike musical numbers of fantasy, it stars Steve Martin as a Chicago sheet- music salesman Arthur Parker, who is frustrated with his frigid wife Joan (Harper) and the failing business and gets smitten with a young school teacher Eileen (Peters) at his first glance.
The Broadway diva Bernadette Peters, extracts a profound ambivalence of good-girl-gone-bad transmogrification with her sultry body language and a baby-like poker face and last but not the least, Jessica Harper will be forever remembered for the lipsticks on her nipples.PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is the last hurrah of the musical genre which had reigned Hollywood over 60 years, its unconventional tact of juggling with reality and escapism is ahead of its time and Dennis Potter's pedestrian script cannot help it either, but in retrospect, it deserves a revitalisation of BluRay treatment, even just for the sake of those sumptuous and consummate dancing-and- singing parodies..
Sheet music salesman Steve Martin is depressed over the state of affairs in his marriage (to the dour Jessica Harper) so he begins an affair with sweet school teacher Bernadette Peters.
there are few film musicals the caliber of Herbert Ross's 'Pennies From Heaven'.
the main characters often imagine their way out of life's hard realities by seeing themselves as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers types in a movie musical.
the musical number where Steve Martin imagines success over his failure is equally humorous and farcical.the film is also kept from being too downbeat because of praiseworthy performances by Martin and Peters.