Lucky Me (1954)

Director:

Jack Donohue

Writers:

Irving Elinson (screenplay)
Robert O'Brien (screenplay)

Release Date:

28 July 1954 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

The fastest-paced pleasure that ever spread a wide smile across the face of the screen!

Plot:

Candy Williams is a struggling performer in a musical troupe, headed by Hap Schneider. Unfortunately...

Cast

Doris Day	...	Candy Williams
Robert Cummings	...	Dick Carson
Phil Silvers	...	Hap Schneider
Eddie Foy Jr.	...	Duke McGee
Nancy Walker	...	Flo Neely
Martha Hyer	...	Lorraine Thayer
Bill Goodwin	...	Otis Thayer
Marcel Dalio	...	Anton
Hayden Rorke	...	Tommy Arthur
James Burke	...	Mahoney

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Warnercolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | USA:Approved (PCA #16754)

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Angie Dickinson's film debut.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Chorus: [sings] Lucky me! / Down the four leaf clover highway, all the signs are pointing my way. / Yes siree. / For lucky me, lucky me, yes siree. / With a lucky star to guide me, and the one I love beside me. / Life can be, so fancy free! / Don't you wish that you could be... Lucky Me!

Movie Connections:

References The Command (1954)

Soundtrack:

Lucky Me

Backing For The Show

For the film Lucky Me, Doris Day was reunited with composers Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster who wrote the score for Calamity Jane and gave Doris one of her biggest hits, Secret Love in one of her biggest film successes. Unfortunately none of the songs from Lucky Me was ever any kind of hit for Day and the film is a very ordinary backstage story.

With some establishing shots in Miami Beach done in Cinemascope, Lucky Me is also the name of the show composer Robert Cummings is writing the score for. Doris is part of a quartet act that consists of Phil Silvers, Eddie Foy, Jr., and Nancy Walker. Through some of the usual Phil Silvers shenanigans, the group has to work to pay off a debt to restaurant owner Marcel Dalio.

Cummings is staying at the hotel that Dalio's restaurant is at and again through shenanigans, Day and Cummings meet. Day thinks he's garage mechanic and Cummings keeps up the pretense as has been done in more movies I can remember. That's because he's romancing daughter of bankroll, Bill Goodwin in the person of Martha Hyer.

If you can't tell where this is all going you haven't seen too many films let alone musicals. It would have been nice if Doris and the gang had been given some hit songs from this film, but Fain and Webster who won Academy Awards for Secret Love and Love Is A Many Splendored Thing came up short in the score for Lucky Me.

Eddie Foy, Jr. and Nancy Walker came up short in footage as well. Especially Nancy Walker who is one of the funniest people around. I believe there is some moments for her in the Warner Brothers vaults if anyone wants to do a director's cut for Lucky Me. Oddly enough Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker within the next 10 years would co-star on Broadway in Do-Re-Mi which was a big success, but never made it to Hollywood.

Doris's fans will like Lucky Me, others can take or leave it and be considered lucky either way.