While listening to a recording of "Penny Serenade", Irene Dunne begins reflecting on her past. She recalls her near-impulsive marriage to newspaper reporter Cary Grant, which begins on a deliriously happy note but which turns out to be fraught with tragedy. While honeymooning in Japan, Dunne and Grant are trapped in the 1923 earthquake, which results in her miscarriage and subsequent incapability to bear children. Upon their return to America, Grant becomes editor of a small-town newspaper, just scraping by financially. Despite their depleted resources, Dunne and Grant want desperately to adopt a child. It seems hopeless until kindly adoptation agency head Beulah Bondi helps smooth their path. Alas, their happiness is once more shortlived: their new daughter, Eva Lee Kuney, succumbs to a sudden illness at the age of 6. Reduced to hopelessness, Dunne and Grant decide to dissolve their marriage, but Bondi once more comes to the rescue. Sentimental in the extreme, Penny Serenade is also enormously effective, balancing moments of heartbreaking pathos with uproarious laughter. Only director George Stevens could have handled a scene with a copiously weeping Cary Grant without inducing discomfort or embarrassment in the audience. Since lapsing into public domain in 1968 (though released by Columbia, the film was owned by Stevens' production firm), Penny Serenade has become almost as ubiquitous a cable-TV presence as It's a Wonderful Life.

George Stevens' The Talk of the Town (1942) is one of the stranger movies to come out of Hollywood during World War II, ranking right up there with The Ox-Bow Incident, even though it's ostensibly a comedy. Actually, it is, but it isn't the kind of comedy that elicits many visible laughs, apart from one side-splitting scene worthy of a French farce about 30 minutes into the film. It's mostly cleverer and more sophisticated than that, a comedy of ideas closer in spirit to the work of George Bernard Shaw than that of Frank Capra, but also as weighty as Capra's best work for Columbia and very rewarding on a romantic level, as well. But before one watches it, they should be prepared -- how many comedies open with an arson, a murder, an indictment, a trial in progress, an escape, and a manhunt? Columbia did well enough with the movie, thanks to a cast led by Cary Grant (in one of his more offbeat roles), Ronald Colman, and Jean Arthur, and it was nominated for Best Picture (as well as Best Screenplay, Best Original Story, Best Score, Best Editing, and Best Interior Decoration), but it never really loomed large in the scheme of wartime comedies, mostly because it is very serious, thoughtful, and demanding -- it's not Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates. The movie works far better today for modern viewers, especially as it's steeped in issues that are still current, about what the law ought to be. Columbia-TriStar Home Video obviously has a lot of faith in the film, as they've put it out in a full-priced edition (as of 2003) on DVD from a digitally restored source. The movie looks splendid for most of its 118 minutes -- far better than the laserdisc version -- and sounds even better with the volume pitched at a decent level, which gives its audience the full-impact of the clever and witty score. The film-to-video transfer is one of the better on a vintage Columbia title from this period in DVD history, with excellent detail throughout and very little in the way of film or digital playback flaws. It's full-frame, of course (1.33:1), as shot, though, for some reason, the video company has added a disclaimer describing this as an "alteration" in the original movie to fit the home screen. The film has been treated well in the programming, with 28 chapters for its two-hour running time. There are no other bonuses, apart from trailers for His Girl Friday and two otherwise utterly unrelated Columbia-TriStar titles. It might have been much more interesting to see how the studio sold, or tried to sell, this movie at the time -- how did they get people in 1942, in the middle of a war, to pay money to see a comedy that includes a lynch mob? The only flaw in the package, other than that omission, is in the final 17 minutes of the movie. Apparently, the final reel wasn't nearly as well-preserved as the rest of it, and we see scratches, grain, and wear. It doesn't mar the viewing experience, though it is noticeable compared to what comes before it.