Lucky Night (1939)

hyped garbage

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

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.

Schizophrenic writing dominates "Lucky Night," a 1939 film starring Robert Taylor and Myrna Loy. Loy is Cora, an heiress who gives it all up for the excitement of looking for a job and living on her own; she meets up with unemployed and flat broke Dick (Taylor). 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 Loy's father, tie the knot.This film starts out like gangbusters, like a lost treasure - a fast- paced, deft comedy with wonderful dialogue and the two Golden Age stars playing off of each other beautifully. Suddenly, it all stops and gets very serious with bizarre dialogue. Cora wants to be safe and happy with home and hearth; Dick still craves the excitement. She leaves him.The film picks up a little toward the end, but what a disappointment. Perhaps the marital problem storyline would have been fine, but not after the way this film started; it's too much of a let-down. Not only that, but Taylor's character starts talking in absolute riddles. Somebody at MGM was asleep at the wheel. This is the type of thing that under Thalberg would never have been released as it was.Like Tyrone Power, Taylor gets short shrift in his acting because of those amazing looks, but jealous critics (mostly men probably) failed to notice that, like Power, he had a beautiful, rich speaking voice and loads of charm. Less ambitious and less complicated than Power, Taylor pretty much took what MGM handed him. "Lucky Night" is one example. Despite the script, he shows his affinity for comedy. Loy is lovely as the heiress, but thankfully, both these actors appeared in better films."Lucky Night" coulda been a contender; instead, it's that rarity in film history - a bad movie from the magic year 1939.

Lucky Night gets off to a roaring start, with Loy and Taylor tearing up the town and obviously having a ball together. There's great chemistry and the situations they get themselves into are a lot of fun to watch. For awhile I was really thinking this movie was going to turn out to be an underrated and little-known gem.Unfortunately, when the pair sober up the next morning, the story goes off the rails and becomes a dreary, incoherent mess. Taylor's character keeps rambling about how he has some "idea" about what life should be, but he can't articulate what he means. The dialogue actually becomes so bizarre at times that I wondered if the writer was all there.This one is worth checking out if you're a fan of Loy -- she's always a pleasure to watch -- but if you start to get antsy halfway through, change the channel. You won't be missing anything.

I first saw this movie on Turner classic movies, and really enjoyed it. It was a fun, flirty and wild (as wild as you could be in the movies of the 30's) story of two people who hit it off and had a crazy life together. Not a brain teaser of a movie, nor was it made to make you think or entertain your brain. In the course of this movie, the two love birds accidentally marry each other, get drunk, beg for a quarter, get rich, and buy a car - all in one night! For a girls' night, or a veg-out session, Myrna Loy is entertaining and fun in this film. Turner should play this more often as an option to the tired and repetitive movies they sometimes show. If you haven't seen this movie, give it a try!