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Lucky Night
Cora, an heiress who gives it all up for the excitement of looking for a job and living on her own, meets up with unemployed and flat broke Dick. The two of them embark on a wild night of gambling and winning, where everything they touch turns to gold. Pretty soon they're in love and, to the horror of Cora's father, married.
Release : | 1939 |
Rating : | 6.1 |
Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Set Decoration, |
Cast : | Myrna Loy Robert Taylor Joseph Allen Henry O'Neill Douglas Fowley |
Genre : | Drama Comedy |
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Expected more
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
I fell in love with Bill Overton before they left the park; Cora's inability to commit to a man before she had a sense of herself was decades ahead of its time...Bill's "Peter Pan" tendencies are really a profound commitment to joy and surprise, and Henry O'Neill as Cora's father is the great remediator and earns every bit of Cora's loyalty, "high, wide and handsome". Modern, full of stylish characters and character it's a jaunty little Jane Austen-like morality tale of the delicate balance between taking life seriously and the honorable pursuit of never-ending impulse, of maintaining your backbone and honesty in the face of losing face, and of the rewards facing up all wrapped into one romantic comedy.
MYRNA LOY and ROBERT TAYLOR play a couple of flighty characters who think they can live on love alone. They only sober up after hubby gives up his $35 a week job in order to put some excitement back into his life. This notion doesn't sit well with Loy, who by then has become accustomed to the security of a paycheck and making it on her own without the help of her wealthy father.That's about it for the plot. The stars do what they can to make this dreary story work--and for awhile I thought they were going to succeed. The first fifteen minutes show possibilities that are never reached in the rest of the script. How and why Metro didn't turn this into a workable enough story for their two stars is a mystery to me.None of it makes much sense, but both stars give it their all. Taylor is relaxed and casual about everything for awhile and actually shows a bit of a flair for light comedy that was never capitalized on for most of his career. Loy is a delight, even when the muddled script makes her appear foolish and downright sappy.It's just another one of those trifles from the '30s that fans of the stars may want to look at, but as entertainment it falls far short of the mark.
Back in the Thirties every studio was making a film or three a year about an heiress and the guy she eventually would marry in the film. Probably the actresses most identified with playing heiresses were Carole Lombard and Myrna Loy. In Lucky Night Myrna Loy teamed for the one and only time with Robert Taylor where she is another madcap heiress that movies loved back in those Thirties.Probably the genre was overdone by the time Lucky Night came out because there certainly isn't anything original about it. It probably could have been put over a lot better had they done this at Paramount with Loy lent out over there to appear with Bing Crosby. With a couple of songs this film might have worked better because the part that Taylor has here, the footloose and fancy free charmer was something Crosby could do in his sleep.As it is Loy is bored with the stuffed shirts that she sees in her social set, none of them quite do it for her including the last one Joseph Allen. So she meets Robert Taylor sitting on a park bench and the two have a madcap evening and wind up the next day hung over and married. That doesn't please Loy's father Henry O'Neill a bit.It's when they try to make a go of it as an ordinary 9 to 5 average American couple that the film just bogs down. And it never really gets back on track by the time it ends.In the Citadel Film series book on The Films of Robert Taylor Lucky Night is described as the first of three dud films that Taylor made, the others being Lady Of The Tropics and Remember. It's not that Lucky Night was as bad as the other two, but it never does gel after the first third is over. It certainly created no demand to team Loy and Taylor again.
This may be the golden age of movies, but now and then (e.g. Penny Serenade) MGM could produce a certified turkey. This gets almost as bad as it gets. And it's 1939, the best year ever for films. Whew.