Forgotten Film Friday (on a Sunday): Pennies From Heaven

A retrospective by Brooks Rich

Sheet music salesman Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) begins to have an affair with a schoolteacher in 1934. His wife does everything she can to win him back. When Arthur breaks off the affair, the schoolteacher becomes a prostitute. But fate may reunite her and Arthur. Life is tough in the depression. Sometimes the characters need an escape, even if it's into a fantasy music and dance number.

Herbert Ross' Pennies From Heaven was a box office bomb in 1981, recouping just a fraction of it's 22 million dollar budget. The film was critically acclaimed and even gained an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. But the audiences just didn't turn up for this one. It makes sense. Entering 1981 Steve Martin was a comedy all-star, whether it be guesting on Saturday Night Live, his standup, or the 1979 classic The Jerk. Audiences weren't ready to see him play a pretty unlikeable guy in a weird musical where the song and dance numbers are fantasies of the cast escaping their pretty bleak lives.

The joy of this movie is the use of dance and song numbers as fantasy sequences, similar in vein to Chicago. The soundtrack are all old songs from the '20s and '30s. The cast lip synch to them, which works. I can't describe it. It just makes it all fit together. The cast is giving it their all, which makes us buy into it. There's a lot of highlights but my faves are the bank number, the title song, and amazing number with a show stealing Christopher Walken.

Personally I love this movie. Martin is sensational as Arthur and I like the against type character he is playing. Martin actually always plays unlikeable characters well. Look at films like Leap of Faith and The Spanish Prisoner. He's downright a scumbag in The Spanish Prisoner. Arthur is a fascinating character as we are with him sort of but she he's kind of a bad guy. I won't spoil anything but where he ends up feels earned.

It's available for rental for under five bucks from Amazon. I think it deserves some reevaluation. Especially for Steve Martin fans who might have passed it up.

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