The Five Pennies

Infobox Film
name = The Five Pennies


image_size =
caption =
director = Melville Shavelson
producer = Jack Rose
writer = Robert Smith Jack Rose Melville Shavelson
narrator =
starring = Danny Kaye Barbara Bel Geddes Harry Guardino Bob Crosby Louis Armstrong Tuesday Weld
music = Thorton W. Allen Sylvia Fine M.W. Sheafe Leith Stevens
cinematography = Daniel L. Fapp
editing = Frank P. Keller
distributor = Paramount Pictures
released = 1959
runtime = 1:57
country = United States
language =
budget =
preceded_by =
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website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0052809

"The Five Pennies" was a semi-biographical 1959 film starring Danny Kaye as cornet player and bandleader Red Nichols. Other cast members included Barbara Bel Geddes, Harry Guardino, Bob Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Susan Gordon , and Tuesday Weld. The film was directed by Melville Shavelson.

The film received four Oscar nominations: Best Musical Scoring (Leith Stevens), Best Original Song (Danny Kaye's wife Sylvia Fine), Best Cinematography (Daniel L. Fapp), and Best Costumes (Edith Head).

The real Red Nichols recorded all of Kaye's cornet playing for the film soundtrack. Unfortunately, the other musicians in Red's band were not asked to provide their musical contributions and the sound of his "band" was supplied by session players.

Plot summary

Red Nichols (Kaye) is a small-town cornet player who moves to New York City in the 1920s and finds work in a band led by Wil Paradise (Crosby). He meets and marries singer Bobbie Meredith (Bel Geddes), and the two form their own Dixieland band called "The Five Pennies" (a play on Nichols' name, since a nickel equals five pennies). As their popularity peaks, their young daughter Dorothy (Susan Gordon) contracts polio and the family leaves the music business, moving to Los Angeles. When Dorothy becomes a teen (Tuesday Weld) she learns of her father's music career and persuades him go on a comeback tour. The tour borders on failure until several notable musicians from Nichols' past appear to save the day.

Trivia

The German 1959 dubbing of the movie named 5 PENNIES MACHEN MUSIK (literally FIVE PENNIES MAKE MUSIC; released 29 January 1960 in Germany) carries a very special secret: in this dubbing Danny Kaye himself sings phonetically in German. All of Kaye's dialogue was dubbed by his regular German voice Georg Thomalla. But Danny Kaye personally went to Berlin to re-dub his vocals of some of the movies' songs into German. It's very obvious that he doesn't understand a word of what he sings at all, but nevertheless does very well. His performance is charismatic, highly sympathetic and works surprisingly fine in spite of his strong accent and pronunciation.

The dubbing was carried out at the renowned company Berliner Synchron GmbH Wenzel Luedecke, which produced the German language versions of almost every Paramount film throughout the 50s and 60s. The dubbing director was Volker J. Becker. The German lyrics were written by Fritz A. Koeniger, who was one of the most skillful writers for dubbing dialogues in Germany ever. Koeniger also provided the German dialogue book for 5 PENNIES as well as for Kaye's KNOCK ON WOOD, THE COURT JESTER and WHITE CHRISTMAS. The German song titles are: "Der kleine Penny" ("Five Pennies"), "Wiegenlied in Ragtime" ("Lullaby in Ragtime"), "Gut' Nacht, schlaf sacht'" ("Good Night - Sleep Tight"), "Die Musik faehrt Karussell" ("The Music goes round and around"), "Klingeling, klingeling, laeutet's immerzu" ("Jingle Bells").

Sigrid Lagemann, the German dubbing voice of Barbara Bel Geddes, also joins in singing together with Danny Kaye in "Wiegenlied in Ragtime" and sings the final reprise of "Der kleine Penny" on her own. All songs Kaye does together with Louis Armstrong remain in the original English (although Armstrong was around at Berlin that time and did a guest appearance in the 1959 film LA PALOMA !). The German songs were never released commercially on record and are exclusives of the German movie track.

In early 1960 a German movie magazine published a picture which shows Danny Kaye and his wife Sylvia Fine at the dubbing atelier of Berliner Synchron. There is also a picture of Kaye together with company owner Wenzel Luedecke taken during his recording session. The German track with the phonetical siniging is available on the Region 2 PAL DVD versions released in Germany, Great Britain and France.

External links

*imdb title|id=0052809|title=The Five Pennies