Editing Penny Serenade (section)

==Production==
[[File:Penny Serenade 4.jpg|right|thumb|Grant and Dunne with Baby Biffle in a scene from the film]]

===Development=== 
For $25,000, Columbia Pictures purchased the rights to a story by [[Martha Cheavens]] published in ''[[McCall's]]'' and engaged Cheavens as script consultant.<ref name=afi>{{cite web |url=https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/27033|title=Penny Serenade (1941)|work=[[American Film Institute]] Catalog|year=2020|access-date=February 23, 2020}}</ref> [[Morrie Ryskind]] was credited for the screenplay.

The film depicts the passage of time through the playing of songs. According to [[George Stevens]]' papers stored at the [[Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences]] library, Stevens kept close track of the chronology of the songs to accurately match them to the different time periods in the script. These songs include "[[The Japanese Sandman]]", "[[These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)|These Foolish Things]]", "[[1927 in music|Just a Memory]]", "[[Three O'Clock in the Morning]]", "[[Ain't We Got Fun]]", and "[[The Prisoner's Song]]".<ref name=afi/>

===Casting===
''Penny Serenade'' is the third of three films pairing Grant and Dunne, each time playing a married couple.<ref name=wlrn/>

At the time, California law restricted the time an infant could be present in a film studio to two hours per day; during that time, the infant could be kept on a sound stage for only one hour, and be filmed under the studio lights for only twenty minutes at a time. To double the amount of time he could film the character of Trina both as a baby and as a one-year-old, Stevens hired identical twin girls for Trina at each age.<ref name=afi/> The baby was played by Judith and Dianna Fleetwood, and the one-year-old by Joan and Jane Biffle.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46695206/the-des-moines-register/|title=Film briefs|newspaper=[[The Des Moines Register]]|date=January 12, 1941|page=51|via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}{{open access}}</ref>

===Filming===
Filming took place from October 14, 1940 to January 15, 1941.<ref name=afi/>