Penny Serenade

film by Stevens [1941]

Written by Lee Pfeiffer

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Penny Serenade, American melodrama film, released in 1941, that highlights the difficulties of a young couple trying to raise an adopted child.

The film follows Julie Adams (played by Irene Dunne) and her husband, Roger (Cary Grant), a reporter in San Francisco, from the beginning of their relationship. When Roger accepts an assignment in Japan, the couple quickly marries and moves there, but an earthquake soon destroys their house and causes the pregnant Julie to miscarry. Upon returning to the United States, where Roger has decided to buy a small-town newspaper, Julie discovers that she is unable to bear future children, and the two decide to adopt a baby girl. Though they struggle financially, their lives are brightened by their daughter, Trina. After Trina dies of an illness at age six, however, the couple plunges into depression. On the verge of separation, Julie and Roger find hope yet again when they are offered another child for adoption.

Following their teaming in the hit comedies The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife, Grant and Dunne reunited under George Stevens’s direction for this highly sentimental dramatic picture. Despite being among the most glamorous of stars, Grant and Dunne convincingly portrayed ordinary middle-class people. Their genuine chemistry, combined with Stevens’s sensitive direction, made this one of the most popular and enduring films of both actors’ careers.