Best movies like Pennies from Heaven
FUN...when Crosby croons himself out of jail and lands on a merry-go-round with the meanest of brats!
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Pennies from Heaven Starring Bing Crosby, Madge Evans, Edith Fellows, Louis Armstrong, and more. If you liked Pennies from Heaven then you may also like: One Way Ticket, Over the Wall, Jail House Blues, Kid Nightingale, Kill the Umpire and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Larry Poole, in prison on a false charge, promises an inmate that when he gets out he will look up and help out a family. The family turns out to be a young girl, Patsy Smith, and her elderly grandfather who need lots of help. This delays Larry from following his dream and going to Venice and becoming a gondolier. Instead, he becomes a street singer and, while singing in the street, meets a pretty welfare worker, Susan Sprague. She takes a dim view of Patsy's welfare under the guardianship of Larry and her grandfather and starts proceedings to have Patsy placed in an orphanage.
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Over the Wall
When a singing, song-writing prizefighter is framed for murder and sent to the state pen, his girlfriend sets out to prove his innocence.
Jail House Blues
A prisoner about to be pardoned puts it off until he can put on one last variety show for his fellow inmates.
Kill the Umpire
Ex-baseball player Bill Johnson, failing at many jobs when his ball-playing days are over, reluctantly takes the advice of his father-in-law, Jonah Evans, a retired umpire, and enters an umpire-training school. Assigned to the Texas League, he does fine until the championship play-offs when a riot develops over one of his calls. The involved player is knocked unconscious in the proceedings and cannot verify that Bill made the correct call. Despite lynch mob plans to at least tar-and-feather him, Bill's family - his daughters Lucy (Gloria Henry and Susan and his wife Betty - help Bill reach the ballpark safely the next day through a series of hair-raising encounters.
Baby Take a Bow
Eddie Ellison is an ex-con who spent time in Sing-Sing prison. Kay marries him as soon as he serves his time. Five years later, Eddie and his ex-convict buddy Larry, have both gone straight, and Eddie and Kay have a beautiful little girl named Shirley. However, Welch has kept a close eye on them for years. He believes in "once a criminal, always a criminal." Then, when Eddie's employer's wife's pearls go missing, it comes out that Eddie and Larry both spent time in prison, and they're fired. Welch suspects that Eddie and Larry have something to do with the theft of the pearls. Will Welch prove that Eddie and Larry had something to do with the theft, or will the truth prevail?
Barefoot Boy
A spoiled boy sent to the country to grow-up. He has to deal with life, friends and crooks.
The Big Shot
Duke Berne, former big shot but now a three-time loser, fears returning to crime because a fourth conviction will mean a life sentence. Finally, haunted by his past and goaded by his cohorts, he joins in planning an armoured car robbery.
Born to Sing
A group of children put on a show in order to prove that a down and out musician was the real composer of a Broadway show's songs.
Brothers
Bob Naughton and Eddie Connolly are identical-twin brothers that were separated in infancy. Bob is raised by a rich lawyer, has all the advantages, but is a drunk with no moral character. Eddie is a pianist in a speak-easy but a man of high character. Bob commits a murder and Eddie is blamed and faces life in prison.
Above the Clouds
Robert Armstrong stars as Scoop Adams, an ace newsreel cameraman whose love affair with the bottle all but destroys him professionally. Scoop manages to get his photographer pal Dick (Richard Cromwell) fired as well, but he promises to restore Dick's reputation, some way or another. He gets his chance while covering a dirigible wreck (some three years before the Hindenburg), saving the day for both Dick and himself.
Tuxedo Junction
The Weaver Brothers and Elviry have migrated from their usual hard-scrabble digs in the Ozarks and have taken up truck-farming.
I Cover the Underworld
Gunner O'Hara is about to be released from prison after serving a five-year sentence, and receives a visit from his twin brother John, a divinity student soon to be ordained as a priest. Aware that Gunner plans to resume his criminal career, John decides to stop him.
All American Sweetheart
Cap Collender (Arthur Loft),a showboat gambling racketeer, ensnares a collegiate rowing team's coxswain, "Squirt" Adams (Jimmy Eagles), into the sports-gambling racket.
Silent Witness
District Attorney Holden and his special investigator Betty Higgins are trying to convict brothers Joe and Lou Manson, silk-racket hoods, after they are indicted for murder.
Secrets of a Nurse
This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.
Women in Prison
The superintendent of a women's prison is pressured to pardon a member of a criminal gang. When she refuses, her daughter is framed on a manslaughter charge and sent to prison.
Paper Bullets
Circumstances force naive Rita Adams into serving an unjust prison term, but she emerges from it a cynical criminal who rises to power in the local crime organization.
Wings for the Eagle
Aircraft workers during during World War II become involved in a love triangle.
Duffy of San Quentin
San Quentin's new warden crusades for reform and for a framed inmate who loves a nurse.
The Chance of a Lifetime
A mad scramble for stolen loot ensues after Boston Blackie has prisoners released for work in a wartime defence plant.
Midnight Morals
A rookie cop falls for a "taxi dancer" in a dance hall, but his father has strong objections to the relationship.
House of Women
An innocent, pregnant prison inmate (Shirley Knight) becomes the bad warden's (Andrew Duggan) personal favorite.
Do You Love Me
Katharine Hilliard, mousy dean of a stuffy music school, meets and is insulted by swing band leader Barry Clayton on a train. To "show" him she takes a friend's advice, removes her glasses, and puts on a designer gown. Naturally, she becomes gorgeous. Soon, both Barry and crooner Jimmy Hale are after her, and she finds herself in the midst of triangles and misunderstandings.
Stolen Harmony
Band leader Jack Conrad is impressed by prison inmate Ray Ferrera on saxophone. Conrad hires Ray to join his band and tour upon his release. Ray hooks up with Jean, a dancer in the show, and the two become a successful dance act. However, when an ex-inmate buddy of Ray's robs the tour bus, Ray is suspected of wrongdoing by Jack and the others in the group. After a gang of thugs hijacks the tour bus, Ray tries to use his street smarts to redeem his reputation.
Boston Blackie
Boston Blackie is a former prison inmate campaigning to outlaw Warden Benton's infamous "Water Cross" torture. Benton, however, is successful in his attempt to have Blackie arrested and returned to the prison, but his evil schemes are ultimately thwarted by Mary Carter, Blackie's girlfriend, who manages to alert the governor.
A Fight to the Finish
A feud between taxicab companies forms the basis of this drama. The trouble begins when the hero is double-crossed and framed for a murder by his rival with whom he was competing for the position of fleet superintendent in the city's biggest cab company.
The Last Mile
Richard Walters is condemned to death for a murder he claims not to have committed. He arrives on death row just before a brutal inmate leads the other convicts in a violent uprising. Walters gets caught up in the riot, while on the outside his friends are trying to find evidence of his innocence.
Swing Shift Maisie
Street-smart Maisie from Brooklyn lands a job at an airplane assembly plant during WWII and falls in love with handsome pilot "Breezy" McLaughlin. Breezy, however, falling in love with and getting engaged to Maisie's conniving roommate Iris, doesn't realize she's using him and it's up to Maisie to convince him.
Girls of the Big House
A women's prison provides the setting for this drama that centers around a naive small-town woman framed by a man whom she met in a nightclub in the big city. She is not welcomed by the inmates and immediately the prisoners are divided.
The Sea Hawk
The adventures of Oliver Tressilian, who goes from English gentry to galley slave to captain of a Moorish fighting ship.
The Detention Girls
A pretty young college student is arrested during a demonstration. She is taken to a notorious detention center, where she is subjected to sexual harassment by lesbian inmates and guards, and becomes the target of a sadistic, bullwhip-wielding warden.
Prison Nurse
A state prison is threatened by approaching floods, an epidemic of typhoid fever breaks out among the inmates, the prison's only doctor falls sick, there are only three nurses to administer vaccines and take care of stricken patients--and a group of prisoners is planning to use the chaos as a cover for a mass escape.
Shadows of Sing Sing
Muriel Rossi (Mary Brian), the sister of a racketeer, Al Rossi (Harry Woods), falls in love with Bob Martel (Bruce Cabot), the son of a police detective, Joe Martel (Grant Mitchell). Their love affair causes bot families problems when Bob is framed, but saved as a result of his father's access to police department films.
One Way Ticket
A convict marries the warder's daughter after his escape and she eventually persuades him to finish his sentence.