The Five Pennies Reviews


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“Danny Kaye Stars In Warner’s Fine ‘Five Pennies’”
Life Story Of Bandman ‘Red’ Nichols Replete With Music, Comedy, Drama
The Pittsburgh Press – Aug. 11, 1959
By: Henry Ward

           It is a genuine pleasure to write nice things about a fine movie such as “The Five Pennies” at the Warner Theater.
            Comedy and drama, music and acting of the best have been wrapped up with care and finesse in this extraordinary biography of Loring “Red” Nichols, cornetist supreme and one of the great bandmen of all time.
            Head and shoulders above the flood of life-story movies, “The Five Pennies” should please everyone, especially those who like the rhythm of Dixieland jazz.
            The movie takes its title from the Nichols band, whose membership once included such jazz greats as Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Dave Tough and Arthur Schutt.
            Wonderful mirth and tender pathos have been superbly blended in this well-paced movie. The music spotlights ever lasting tunes. The color photography is magnificent. The story line makes sense and speaks with an authenticity that doesn’t need padding.
            All of these sparkling attributes present a gem of a setting for the top drawer performances of the
incomparable Danny Kaye, talented Barbara Bel Geddes and Louis Armstrong.

            The script moves smoothly in tracing the story of “Red” Nichols from the time he comes out of obscurity with his silver horn until he reaches the peak of his profession only to have his career nipped at its zenith when his daughter is stricken with polio.
            Blaming himself for his daughter’s affliction, “Red” tosses his beloved cornet from the Golden Gate Bridge and abandons his band to become a family man with a menial job in a shipyard. But wife and daughter alike with the aid of old cronies put “Red” on the comeback trail.
            “The Five Pennies” molds the high spots and the low of Nichols’ career deftly with just the right touch of humanness, wit and pathos.
            Linking the chapters are a series of remarkable band sequences bring back such all-time favorites as “My Blue Heaven,” “Ja Da,” “Back Home Again in Indiana,” “The Music Goes Round and Round” and “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home.”

            But “The Five Pennies” is far more than just a cavalcade of music.
            It presents Kaye with every opportunity to display his remarkable talents as one of the nation’s best showmen. He sings, he clowns, he dances, he handles a coronet with amazing and convincing dexterity. And he has tremendous appeal in some of the more solemn moments. To this reviewer’s point of view it is the best Danny Kaye has done in the movies.
            Barbara Bel Geddes exudes naturalness and charm as the girl in the band who marries its leader and sticks by him through sunshine and darkness. Susan Gordon is a little heartbreaker as the child who loves to sing and dance, but is cut down by polio and as the grown up Dorothy Nichols, Tuesday Weld is equally charming.

            Louis Armstrong, ol’ “Satchmo,” has a field day with his role of portraying himself and when he cuts loose with “Bill Bailey” and “duets” with Kaye in a glorious arrangement of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the movie audience is moved to justifiable and spontaneous applause. You just can’t hear a performance like this and not do something about it.
            There’s a whale of a supporting cast, too, with Bob Crosby, Ray Anthony, Harry Guardino, Ray Daly and Valerie Allen.
            Kaye’s wife in real life, Sylvia Fine, has contributed to the musical side with the words and music “The Five Pennies,” “Lullaby in Ragtime” and other tunes.
            There’s a heap of credit due to Director Melville Shavelson and Producer Jack Rose, who with Shavelson wrote the screenplay.

            By all means see “The Five Pennies.” You’ll feel like dancing and you’ll feel like crying a bit and probably will—but you’ll be smiling through your tears. It’s a grand show.

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