Just My Luck ** (1957, Norman Wisdom, Margaret Rutherford, Jill Dixon, Leslie Phillips, Joan Sims, Edward Chapman) – Classic Movie Review 9560

Director John Paddy Carstairs’s 1957 British comedy Just My Luck finds Norman Wisdom re-united with Margaret Rutherford, the co-star of his 1953 debut film Trouble in Store.

Just our luck to have Wisdom as Norman Hackett, a jeweller’s shop helper, who risks £1 on a six horse accumulator bet at the Goodwood races so he can afford to propose to his unobtainable fantasy girlfriend, store window dresser Anne (Jill Dixon), and buy her a diamond pendant.

Wisdom, of course, soon gets into trouble when he tries his luck with a shady bookmaker on a thousands-to-one chance that a jockey will win all six of his races in a day.

Wisdom is on fairly good form as the jeweller’s odd-job man in love with Dixon, but what gets this pleasant enough old comedy workhorse to the winning post is Rutherford, who steals every scene as a racehorse owner, Mrs Dooley. And Leslie Phillips, Joan Sims and Edward Chapman make their genial presences felt too, though they are not especially well used.

The thin plot by Alfred Shaughnessy and low-key screenplay by Alfred Shaughnessy and Peter Blackmore are distinct disadvantages. And, as Wisdom was such a big money-spinner for The Rank Organisation, couldn’t they have afforded colour?

Also in the cast are Delphi Lawrence, Peter Copley, Michael Ward, Bill Fraser, Campbell Cutts, Robin Bailey, Sabrina, Marjorie Rhodes, Felix Felton, Sam Kydd, Frank Atkinson, Lynn Cole, Leslie Davenport, Stringer Davis, Sylvia Childs, Eddie Dillon, Michael Brennan, Marianne Stone, Eddie Leslie, Ian Wilson, Ballard Berkeley, Jill Clifford, Vic Wise and Tom Naylor.

Jill Dixon was born in 1935 in England.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9560

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