The Five Pennies
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Movie Reviews of The Five Pennies
Movie Review: The Five Pennies is Worth Its Weight in Gold
Summary: 5 Stars
Times change. Stars fall and are forgotten. Even worse, an actor is remembered for only one type of role and his unique work is pushed to the background. It is our good fortune to finally have one of Danny Kaye's finest performances on DVD. The Five Pennies is now available on a barebones release.
Kaye is known for some brilliant comedies including The Court Jester, and for some more subtle performances like Hans Christian Anderson, but here he combines the best of the two. In what purports to be the life story of famous cornet player, Loring "Red" Nichols, Kaye is wonderful. Along for the ride is Barbara Bel Geddes (Broadway's Maggie the cat) as wife Bobbie. With her close, squinty eyes and squat shape, she is not exactly a movie babe, but she is terrific actress and great acting partner for Kaye.
Three things up the ante of this film to excellent: the Oscar-nominated color photography in VistaVision by Daniel L. Fapp, the music performed by Louis Armstrong and Nichols himself as Kaye mimes the playing, and the performance of child actress Susan Gordon as Dorothy Nichols.
Kaye's scene with Gordon as he croons the Oscar-nominated title tune (written by his wife Sylvia Fine) is as touching a moment ever captured on film. Kaye and Gordon seem to transcend themselves to actually become father and daughter. Their poker scene is charming. Gordon (who grows up to be Tuesday Weld later in the film) holds her own musically with Kaye and Armstrong and is a movie moppet to be adored.
Illness in the family, quitting show business, and other problems populate the final third of the film, but it is all presented with the proper sentiment. When Red picks up his cornet again, we are glad.
The Five Pennies, its superb cast, 20 great musical numbers, and beautiful settings would be a welcome addition to your collection. Kaye will touch your heart, and Gordon will make you smile with a tear in your eyes.
Movie Review: Movie worth a Million Pennies
Summary: 5 Stars
My grandmother introduced me to Danny Kaye movies starting with White Christmas and Court Jester. Later I found movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that were just as funny. I was hooked on Danny Kaye the actor/comedian.
This is not one of his outrageously hilarious movies. It's sad and beautiful with a wonderful plotline. A wonderful cast compliments Danny Kaye and the musical score is fantastic-- very jazzy rag. Louis Armstrong duets with Danny Kaye in voice as well as trumpet (coronet). My favorite song has to be Lullabye in Ragtime, though. They manage to meld two different melodies perfectly.
The movie focuses on the life of Red Nichol (Danny Kaye) as a small-town coronet player trying to make it big in the music industry. He falls in love and gets married, but just as he's starting to make it to the big-time his wife gets pregnant. They take the baby on the road with them for as long as they can but it's no life for a child. Eventually she is sent to a boarding school where she contracts polio. Red is so overcome with guilt that he gives up everything he had in the music industry to help his daughter get well and walk again. By the time she's grown up and able to stand again she has forgotten that her father had ever been in the music industry. Red's wife and all his old band buddies want him to be happy and get back into music, but Red keeps falling into depression and punishing himself for his daughter's polio. It ends beautifully with all his band buddies turning out to hear him play and his daughter walking towards him without her cane and them dancing together. It makes me cry every time.
I would highly recommend this to anyone as a feel good, slice-of-life movie that both has it's joyous highs and rock-bottom lows.
Movie Review: Warm from the bottom of the heart
Summary: 5 Stars
Danny Kaye played Loring "Red" Nichols, the well known cornet player who rose to his fame in 1930s and whose Jazz group "Five Pennies" was once home to Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman and more - great musicians in the 40s Swing music.
The movie was coherent, tightly woven both in the musical and emotional aspects. The duets between Danny Kaye (played by Red himself) and Louis Armstrong - the Battle Hymn of Republic and the Saints are marching - were wonderful. On the emotional side, Barbara Bel Geddes (Mrs. Ewing in Dallas) as Danny Kaye's sweetheart was a loving wife who endured long tours in the Five Pennies group, a devoted mother and a steadfast lady who held the family together. The bonds between the Five Pennies musicians, father and daughter, husband and wife are close and personal.
Susan Gordon, as the couple's daughter Dorothy from 6 - 8 yrs old, was a delight. She was intelligent, passionate for her father's music and love, and would settle for nothing less. The night when father and daughter developed a closer bond over the song "Five Pennies", a table of cards, followed by a duet in the bar was touching. Susan Gordon's performance was subtle yet memorable. The dramatic turn when Danny Kaye threw away his cornet and work in a wartime shipyard at a meagre salary to make up for Dorothy in the subsequent years was heartbreaking. When the accomplished cornet player did make a comeback, it was not easy but gradual. The big finale was a tear jerker, but it's worth every tear.
This is a well-balanced act between the musical and drama. Definitely worth watching it again and again.
Movie Review: Great story, acting and music too...
Summary: 5 Stars
This story presents the life of Red Nichols in a truly unique and entertaining way typical of many of the period's better films. However this film rises far above them all by entertaining you from the beginning till the end. Danny Kaye plays Red Nichols a talented and driven cornet player who begins his career with the Will Paradise's band but feeling trap and unable to play his own style of jazz branches out forming his own band The Five Pennies.
Together with his band and his singer/wife Bobbie played by a young Barbara Bel Geddes of "Dallas" fame cris-cross the country entertaining local dance and jazz fans. They continue their touring even after the birth of their daughter Dorothy who is played superbly by both Susan Gordon and Tuesday Weld. When Red's wife Bobbie believes the traveling from town to town and the night club lifestyle becomes too much for their daughter they send her off for a more normal life at boarding school. After a crisis involving Dorothy brings the family together again and it is determined continuous care for her would be needed they soon see the importance of sacrifice and what is really important in life. But they also find it's never too late to pick up a cornet again.
The sound track for this film is also amazing. Performances by the one and only Louis Armstrong both acting and musically were great and to see Danny Kaye and him together is on it's own worth seeing this film. The film brings together a great story, great acting, and great music to make a really amazing 117 minutes.
Movie Review: Danny Kaye Gets Serious
Summary: 5 Stars
In THE FIVE PENNIES (1959), funnyman Danny Kaye takes on the real-life role of jazz legend Loring "Red" Nichols, considered to be one of the greatest horn players of his day. Dorsey, Miller, Shaw and other major band leaders got their starts with him.
Nichols himself plays the horn for Kaye off-camera, but Danny has plenty of opportunities to clown and make his own unique kind of music on-screen. Indeed, a duet of "When the Saints Go Marching In" with the incomparable Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong is one of the film's highlights.
There is, however, a serious side to Nichols' story. In the late 1930s, while his band was playing date-after-date on the road, his young daughter came down with polio. As a result, he decided to quit the music business, going to work in a defense plant and spending more time with his family. He not make a comeback until after World War II.
Melville Shavelson directed this touching, entertaining biography, which co-stars Barbara Bel Geddes, Harry Guardino, Tuesday Weld, Bob Crosby and Bobby Troup.
© Michael B. Druxman