The Five Pennies Review Fathers and Daughters

       I seriously just finished watching the great Danny Kaye in the film The Five Pennies for the very first time. Some will be shocked to hear this. I've read in many comments on YouTube clips of this wonderful movie that they grew up with Danny Kaye. Well, I've known about Danny Kaye for a while myself. Used to watch some of his work when I was younger (Hans Christian Anderson being the first and probably fav) but this film escaped me. For the past few days I've been on a Danny Kaye marathon and after watching some clips of The Five Pennies and read all those great comments about how the film was one of Danny's best I couldn't go any longer without giving it a try. Earlier I'd seen a clip from The Danny Kaye Show where the guest for that episode was Louis Armstrong. They sang the same song they sung in The Five Pennies. They were quite the pair but this review isn't going to be talking about them. In this review I'm going to talk about the relationship between Kaye's character and the two young ladies who played his daughter.

     The Five Pennies is a film loosely based on the life of Red Nichols, a famous band leader from the 1920s. Kaye plays Mr. Nichols with his usual Kaye style along with the engaging music written by his real life wife Silvia Fine. Now I've seen a few Danny Kaye films and most of them have that comic flair that only Mr. Kaye can deliver but when he throws in the drama with the comedy I do believe that's where Kaye shines the best. This film has plenty of laughs and plenty of drama. In the film when Red's daughter Dorothy is born the musician is torn between making it big in his career and taking care of his little girl. One night his daughter doesn't want to go to sleep and it's 2am. Red and his band boys are playing poker so Red gets a little huffy with his daughter and yells at her to go back to bed. This upsets her and his band mates. The boys leave and we are subject to a beautiful song sung by Red to his daughter to try to get her to go to sleep. This is the moment when the film changed for me from being just another movie to something really special. I guess to get you to see it from my point of view I have to tell you a little about my own life.

     For the first three years of my life I had a father. He was my stepfather and I loved him dearly. Well, from what I was told and from what I can barely remember. After my mother divorced him it was only my mother and I for about three years until my brother was born of course. Never again was I to have a stable father in my life. Men would come and go in my mother's life and mine but none of them stayed to be a part of our family. I think ever since then when I watch famous male movie stars of yesteryear I have a sort of fascination with them and wonder what it would be like if they would've been my father. Okay, I'll admit it. I guess I have daddy issues! lol! I don't know if you've ever heard about this but it's sort of like what a real daughter of a famous father once said about her own past. Clark Gable's and Loretta Young's secret love child Judy Lewis only met her famous father once in her life at 15. She never saw him again in real life only in the movies of course. She used to watch Gone With the Wind and cry when Gable was playing with his onscreen daughter. Lewis said she used to pretend that she was that girl because she herself never experience having Gable be there for her. I can empathize with her in a way. Father/daughter moments in films if they're done right make me start to ball my eyes out because I know I'll never experience anything like that in my life. Back to The Five Pennies. When Red sings The Five Pennies theme song to his daughter it is one of the most touching scenes in the whole film. I was okay at the beginning but somewhere in the middle of the song to his little one I turned into Niagara Falls. I started envy this little girl and also Danny Kaye's real life daughter Dena. She got to experience a father who could entertain her, love her, and teach her about life. Believe me, you people out there who have a father or had one all through your childhood, one who was good to you and cared for you and loved you dearly, you should be thankful. There a many of us out there that will NEVER know what that is like. EVER.

     Later in the film the drama kicks in even more. Red seems to neglect his daughter by keeping her in boarding schools while him and his wife travel the country with his band. Even missing birthdays and holidays away from their little girl. When Dorthy is struck with polio, this seems to put things into sharp and painful perspective for Red and his wife. His daughter doesn't even want him around at first. So he quits his music and works in a shipyard, buys a home for his family, and takes care of Dorthy for years helping her to walk again.

When Dorthy is a teen and everyone else in Red's old band has moved on without him and became famous, Red's daughter wants him to go back into the music business because she can see how much he did for her and how much he desperately needs to go back. Of course they have to end the film with all his buddies coming in to a club to play with Red (even Louis Armstrong) and we also have daughter Dorthy giving her father a surprise. She can finally stand and walk on her own. Red's wife (played by the lovely Barbara Bel Geddes who you might recognize from a future role in Dallas) sings The Five Pennies theme song again and I'm a Niagara Falls mess one more time! You know Hans Christian Anderson may have to step aside as my favorite Danny Kaye film from now on. This film gave me the same feeling as when Colin Firth danced a father/daughter dance with Amanda Bynes at the end of What a Girl Wants. Yep, we always want what we cannot have right? Tootles.