Pennies from Heaven was Steve Martin’s first dramatic role in a film. He had watched the original miniseries and considered it “the greatest thing he’d ever seen.”
Grade: B
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Theatrical release poster by Bob Peak
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He trained for eight months learning to tap dance, while Christopher Walken, who had trained as a dancer as a young man, was able to use his dancing skills in the film.
MGM had Potter rewrite the script 13 times and required him to buy back his copyright from the BBC.
MGM prohibited broadcast of the BBC’s original production for 10 years. In 1989, producer Kenith Trodd was able to buy back the rights from MGM for inconsiderable sum. In February 1990, the BBC rebroadcast the original Pennies from Heaven serial for the first time since 1978.
Bob Hoskins and Cheryl Campbell, the stars of the original series, were upset for not being considered for the film. I think they still blame Dennis and me in some way, but there was no way to argue the point with MGM.”
Visual and Musical Homages
The movie’s style balances the drab despair of the Depression era and the characters’ sad lives with brightly colored dream-fantasy lavish musical sequences.
The characters break into song and dance to express their emotions. Eileen turns into a silver-gowned torch singer in her school-room, with her students lip-synching and dancing (“Love Is Good for Anything That Ails You”). Tom seduces Eileen with a tap dance-striptease routine on top of a bar (“Let’s Misbehave”).
Arthur and Eileen go to see Follow the Fleet and wind up dancing in formal wear, first with, then in, a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical number from the film, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”
The songs are lip-synched, except Martin singing-speaking the title song at the end.
An innovative musical, it included several homages to the great painters of the era.
Four paintings are recreated as tableaux vivants in the film: Hudson Bay Fur Company and 20 Cent Movie by Reginald Marsh, and New York Movie and Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, which emphasize the loneliness and alienation of the Depression era..
Three of the four were painted after 1934, when the movie takes place, and all depict scenes in New York City rather than the Chicago setting of the movie
The film was a commercial failure, grossing $9 million at the box office, against a budget of $22 million.
Screenplay by Dennis Potter, based on Pennies from Heaven, 1978 TV series by Dennis Potter
