Through the Years with Bernadette Peters

Pennies From Heaven (1981)

Sometime after the failure of "Mack and Mabel," (where she introduced the the torchy "Time Heals Everything" with heartbreaking intensity), Peters relocated to Los Angeles and became one of the decade's most reliable comedic actresses in such titles as Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie," John Huston's "Annie," and Carl Reiner's "The Jerk," where she starred opposite Steve Martin, her boyfriend at the time. But her greatest acting triumph was a musical in which she didn't sing a note, "Pennies from Heaven." The film, directed by Herbert Ross, again paired Peters with Martin, but in a much different mode than their previous work. Dennis Potter adapted his screenplay from his hit British television series set in the 1930s that told a downbeat story of a dreamy sheet music salesman who cheats on his wife, gets a schoolteacher pregnant, abandons her, and is executed for a murder he didn't commit. Not quite "Annie." As is standard in musicals, the characters break into song to express their emotions; except Potter used a device where the actors lip-synched to recordings of period songs. When Peters as the schoolteacher-turned-prostitute sings "Love Is Good for Anything That Ails You," it is not her voice, rather that of little-known voice actress Ida Sue Mccune, who recorded the song with an arrangement by Billy May. Porter is ideally cast, having the range to go from the sweetly innocent young woman Martin picks up in a music store to the sexy vamp singing "I Want to be Bad" to the original 1920s recording by Helen Kane. The big-budgeted film brilliantly contrasted the drab poverty of Depression-era America with flashy musical numbers in the style of lavish musical films from the period; but audiences didn't relate to its dark vision and it failed big time at the box office. Still, critic Pauline Kael raved: "'Pennies from Heaven' is the most emotional movie musical I have ever seen." And of Martin and Peters, who dare to climb onto the screen and mimic the iconic Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers number "Let's Face the Music and Dance," she added: "The star, Steve Martin, doesn't flatter the audience for being hip; he gives an almost incredibly controlled performance, and Bernadette Peters is mysteriously right in every nuance."