Penny Serenade is a 1941 American melodrama film directed by George Stevens starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant as a loving couple who must overcome adversity to keep their marriage and raise a child.

The film charts the meeting, courtship and marriage of Julie Gardiner (Irene Dunne) and Roger Adams (Cary Grant) through the playing of popular songs relevant to each time period.

They apply at an adoption agency for a two-year-old boy, and receive a call from Miss Oliver (Beulah Bondi) that a five-week-old baby girl is available.

Describing the plot elements as "tenderness, heart-throb, comedy and good, old-fashioned, gulping tears", the review notes: "Half a dozen times the yarn approaches the saccharine, only to be turned back into sound, human comedy-drama".

[7] Radio Times said that Grant "gives a lesson in screen acting and was rightly Oscar-nominated for a superb, subtly-shaded portrayal that keeps sentimentality at bay".

[8] When the movie premiered at the Radio City Music Hall, Bosley Crowther, in a somewhat ambivalent review, concludes "[there is] some very credible acting on the part of Mr. Grant and Miss Dunne is responsible in the main for the infectious quality of the film.

Penny Serenade was dramatized as a half-hour radio play on the November 16, 1941, broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in their original roles.

[10] It was also presented as an hour-long drama on Lux Radio Theater, first on April 27, 1942, with Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck,[11] and then on May 8, 1944, starring Joseph Cotten and Irene Dunne.

[14] Subsequently, the film has seen many releases by budget labels on various home video formats, but all are of very poor quality and most, but not all, are missing a pivotal five-minute scene in which Grant pleads with a judge to be allowed to adopt despite the failure of his newspaper.

Using these elements, Penny Serenade has been released uncut and in high quality on Blu-ray and DVD in the US (Olive Films, 2013) and Germany (Alive, 2017).

[16] The main character in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (2007) watches Penny Serenade in a Shanghai movie theater showing Western films.