Lucky Me ** (1954, Doris Day, Robert Cummings, Phil Silvers, Eddie Foy Jr, Nancy Walker, Martha Hyer) – Classic Movie Review 7,690

It is lucky there are Doris Day’s vigour and her sparky way with a tune, plus reliable fun from Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker, in the 1954 Warner Bros musical film Lucky Me because it does not have too much else to recommend it.

The other performers are largely stranded in this moderate, easy-going yarn of travelling entertainers stuck in Miami, where struggling performer Candy Williams (Day) meets romantically inclined Manhattan tunesmith Dick Carson (Robert Cummings).

However, director Jack Donohue’s good-natured musical is redeemed by the high spirits of the sterling cast and the excellent songs (including ‘High Hopes’ by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, plus ‘The Superstition Song’, ‘I Speak to the Stars’, ‘I Want to Sing Like an Angel’, ‘Men!’ and ‘Love You, Dearly’.

Director Donohue does not seem happy with working in the then new CinemaScope format but he is happier with working in WarnerColor.

Lucky Me is notable for giving an unbilled Angie Dickinson (aged 23) her first speaking role as a guest at the party. She then appeared in Tennessee’s Partner, The Return of Jack Slade, Man with the Gun, Hidden Guns and Tension at Table Rock before her breakthrough in Gun the Man Down (1956) and Rio Bravo (1959).

Angeline Dickinson (née Brown) was born on 30 September 1931.

Also in the cast are Eddie Foy Jr, Martha Hyer, Bill Goodwin, Marcel Dalio, Hayden Rorke, James Burke, William Bakewell, Charles Cane, Jean De Briac, Dolores Dorn, Cliff Ferre, Bess Flowers, Jack George, Dabbs Greer, Jim Hayward, Percy Helton, Emmeline Henry, Gladys Hurlbut, Lucy Marlow, Tom Powers, Jack Shea, George Sherwood, Ray Teal, Ann Tyrrell and Herb Vigran.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,690

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