Just Around the Corner

Just Around the Corner is a 1938 American musical comedy film directed by Irving Cummings, and written by Ethel Hill, Darrell Ware and J. P. McEvoy, based on the novel Lucky Penny by Paul Gerard Smith. The film stars Shirley Temple as young Penny Hale, who must cope with the consequences after her architect father is forced by circumstances to accept a job as a janitor. It was the fourth and last cinematic song and dance pairing of Temple and Bill Robinson. Plot Penny Hale is attending a private girls' school when she is informed that her enrollment has ended and she will be heading home to live with her widowed father, Jeff Hale. She accepts this revelation as good news, unaware that her father, a prominent architect, is in dire financial straits and can no longer afford Penny's tuition. Furthermore, Jeff has lost his penthouse apartment and his car, but he has secured a menial job in the building as its custodian so he and Penny will still have a home: Jeff and Penny now reside in a small basement dwelling. Although Jeff is humbled by this downturn in his career, the always optimistic Penny looks upon this change of life as an adventure. Penny often runs afoul of Waters, an overly officious apartment employee, who tries to keep her out of places in the building she once frequented when her father was wealthy. Jeff is romantically linked with Lola, the niece of the disagreeable woman who now occupies his old apartment. Lola's uncle, Samuel Henshaw, is a major financier who once employed Jeff to design a major building project, but discontinued it. Penny also befriends Lola's brother Milton, a somewhat pampered and effete boy. Penny assists him in shedding his prim and snobbish appearance, cutting off his prominent curls, in an attempt to make him look more like a "he-man." A discouraged Jeff explains to Penny that the United States is mired in the Great Depression because Uncle Sam is being pestered by too many people who want his money. He shows her a newspaper cartoon that illustrates this idea. Penny discovers that Samuel Henshaw is referred to as "Uncle Sam" by his niece and nephew and does bear a strong resemblance to the symbolic Uncle Sam in the newspaper cartoon. Penny amusingly believes Samuel Henshaw is actually Uncle Sam. Henshaw considers re-hiring Jeff and assigning him to a project in far-off Borneo to keep him away from Lola.