The Five Pennies

The Five Pennies is a semibiographical 1959 film starring Danny Kaye as cornet player and bandleader Loring Red Nichols. Other cast members includes Barbara Bel Geddes, Louis Armstrong, Harry Guardino, Bob Crosby, Bobby Troup, Susan Gordon, and Tuesday Weld. The film was directed by Melville Shavelson.

Red Nichols Kaye is a smalltown cornet player who moves to New York City in the 1920s and finds work in a band led by Wil Paradise Crosby. He meets and marries singer Willia Stutsman, a.k.a. Bobbie Meredith Bel Geddes, and the two form their own Dixieland band called The Five Pennies a play on Nichols name, since a nickel equals five pennies. As their popularity peaks, their young daughter Dorothy Susan Gordon contracts polio and the family leaves the music business, moving to Los Angeles. When Dorothy becomes a teen Tuesday Weld she learns of her fathers music career and persuades him go on a comeback tour. The tour borders on failure until several notable musicians from Nichols past appear to save the day.

Source: Wikipedia