Penny Serenade

A newspaperman and a former shop girl meet over a phonograph record in a San Francisco music store, and their marriage plays out through the songs that bookend it. As Julie packs to leave Roger, she plays each record and remembers: the courtship, the move to Japan, the earthquake that costs them everything, the long wait to adopt a child, and the strain of Roger's failing newspaper that pulls them apart. George Stevens directs with a gentle, unhurried hand, letting the music carry the emotion the dialogue will not. Cary Grant, in one of his two Oscar-nominated dramatic performances, is loose and wounded as Roger, and Irene Dunne matches him with a performance built on small, precise gestures. The film is a melodrama in the old sense, earned by patience rather than contrivance. Its copyright was not renewed at the end of its first 28-year term, and it entered the public domain in 1970.