My Lucky Star (1938)

Perfect cast and a good story

Good movie but grossly overrated

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

A Sonja Henie-centered musical romance. There's little music in the first portion, until Sonja becomes a combo student and undercover model for George Cabot's(George Babier) clothing department store at Plymouth College. Thereafter, music and the occasional skating scene become prominent. The music often features a chorus, with or without one or two lead singers. The 2 biggest musical/skating productions come at the end. The first of these emphasizes a fashion show, with singing by Arthur Jarrett, later by Buddy Ebsen and Joan Davis, who constitute one of several romantic pairs featured. The featured song is "I've Got a Date with a Dream", composed by the team of Harry Revel and Mack Gordon, as are all the other songs, except those for the last major production number, which features the skating of Sonja and others. Alice in Wonderland is the theme of this number. The music is mostly from Victor Herbert's "The March of the Toys", and the "Alice in Wonderland Ballet". Skaters dressed in various childhood story characters or toys skate around with Sonja, in one portion. Surely could have used color for this portion and the fashion show!......Every musical needs some comedy. for balance. In this film, George Barbier , as the blustery owner of the Cabot department store, and Cesar Romero, as his playboy son, supply much of the humor, interacting with each other, or separately..... In a cameo performance, .Billy Gilbert provides a classic comedy routine, in which Sonja and boyfriend Richard Greene are the straight 'men'. Greene tells Billy that they each want a chocolate sunday. But, in his distinctive manner, Billie describes a list of alternatives, which usually include pistachio nuts. Finally, they give in and accept one of his suggestions. Later, he returns with the news that he is out of pistachio nuts...... After his stroke of genius in thinking up the student/undercover model trick, Cesar had another brainstorm: Combine the winter carnival with a fashion show at the Cabot department store! Cesar took advantage of his fathers absence on a Cuban holiday to implement this undertaking. The highlight is the last two musical productions I previously described. A major purpose of this show is to hopefully make $50,000. to give to Cesar's estranged wife(played by Gypsy Rose Lee) so that she will withdraw her claim that Cesar was having an affair with Sonja. When George Cabot Sr. returns from Cuba, he has a fit when he finds out about the Carnival being housed in his store, and demands that the participants leave immediately. They have to tie him up and gag him to keep him from ruining every thing....... In summary, parts of the screenplay are not too realistic. Otherwise, it's generally entertaining, with lots going on besides Sonja's occasional skating. Richard Greene is a bit undertalented as Sonja's new boyfriend.......Despite his handsome looks and interesting personality, Cesar Romero hardly ever wound up with the leading lady. Perhaps his Latin heritage was a problem? See this film at YouTube. Other films featuring Sonja currently available at YouTube include "One in a Million" and "Sun Valley Serenade": the last also featuring the Glenn Miller orchestra.

Inane college farce without the academics, of course.When the wealthy son (Cesar Romero) marries a fortune-hunter all hell should have broken lose. Instead, a silly story ensues.Romero finds Sonja Henje and decides with his father to send her off to college to promote the store's clothing line. There, she finds love with Richard Greene, but our fairy tale falters when she is named correspondent by the scheming wife of Romero.There is a good song sketch by "college" students Buddy Ebsen and Joan Davis.Ironically, both Davis and Arthur Treacher costarred with Henje in the much better "Thin Ice" with Tyrone Power.The people lacks any form of intelligence and Henje only really does some real skating at about the last 10 minutes of the film.

MY LUCKY STAR (20th Century-Fox, 1938), directed by Roy Del Ruth, bearing no resemblance to any movie about Hollywood nor any connection with the Janet Gaynor silent melodrama, LUCKY STAR (Fox, 1929), is a likable and tuneful musical starring Fox's own lucky star herself, Olympic ice skating champion, Sonja Henie, in her fourth motion picture role. Following her enormous success in ONE IN A MILLION (1936), THIN ICE (1937) and HAPPY LANDING (1938) opposite Fox's top leading men as Don Ameche and Tyrone Power, Henie acquires a newcomer named Richard Greene, a likable British actor whose name has failed to equal both popularity and starring status of either Ameche or Power.The lightweight plot revolves around Christina Nielson (Sonja Henie), a Norweigian girl employed as package wrapper for New York's Cabot's Fifth Avenue Department Store. After two years in the sporting goods department, she is found skating after hours by George Cabot Jr. (Cesar Romero), son of the store's founder (George Barbier). A recent groom in the process of divorce proceedings from cabaret queen, Marcelle (Louise "Gypsy Rose Lee" Hovak), George invites Christine to his apartment, where, after going to another room, is met by a surprise visit from Marcelle and her witness, Louie (Paul Hurst), with intentions of using the unknown blonde as grounds for divorce. George, however, breaks away with Christina before Marcelle is able to see her face. In order to keep Christina out of sight and help boost up sales at the same time, George impresses "Papa" by having Christina representing the store by sending her to Plymouth University (P.U.) in upstate New York where she's to secretly work modeling sporting clothes while getting an education at the company's expense. While there, Christina catches the attention upper class-man, Larry Taylor (Richard Greene). All goes well until Christina, an ice skating sensation in their ice carnival, makes the front cover in Life Magazine, where her photograph is brought to the attention of Marcelle who uses Christina's name in a divorce scandal that soon gets her expelled from Plymouth.With college musicals commonly found in the 1930s, song interludes and skating numbers take precedence over typical football game finale. Composers Mack Gordon and Harry Revel provide such fine tunes as: "Plymouth Mountain Song," "This May Be the Night" "What a Well Dressed Woman Will Wear," "By a Wishing Well," "Could You Pass in Love?"; "I've Got a Date With a Dream" (sung by Art Jarrett); Victor Herbert's "March of the Toys"; and "This May Be the Night" (finale). The "I've Got a Date with a Dream" number is cleverly staged fantasy based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." Interestingly, when MY LUCKY STAR used to air on public television back in the 1980s, this finale (now restored) was missing Victor Herbert's "March of the Toys" ice carnival sequence skated by Henie and assortment of "Alice in Wonderland" characters.Other members of the faculty consist of Buddy Ebsen and Joan Davis. Davis, as Henie's college roommate, who livens things up with her usual flair for comedy, whether it be through pratfalls or quipping out funny one-liners. She has her work cut out for her as Ebsen's girlfriend, who, as Plymouth's cab driver, shows more interest in his horse, Lulu, than with her. Joan and Buddy collaborate in the humorous "Could You Pass in Love" number, singing and dancing to good advantage. Arthur Treacher appears briefly as the Cabot's droll butler; while Elisha Cook Jr., shortly before his association in "film noir" mysteries in the 1940s, is seen playing a nerdy character named Wilmer.Hardly original though highly entertaining, any similarity between MY LUCKY STAR and Henie's previous HAPPY LANDING, is purely coincidental. The film returns Cesar Romero in a Mischa Auer type performance as the nerve wracking groom with women problems (ex-wife here), along with Billy Gilbert once again adding confusion with his double talk with his "Chocolate Sundae /Tootie Fruitie Sundae with Pistachio Nuts" routine opposite Greene in a malt shop.Formerly presented on American Movie Classics prior to 1993, and available intact on home video, right down to the reading of "This is One of the Movie Quiz $250,000.00 Contest Picture" before the closing cast credits, MY LUCKY STAR is silly at best, but highly commendable, especially with Sonja Henie skating her way through college. Watch for it next time it plays on the Fox Movie Channel(*** diplomas)

I bought this movie because I am a huge Richard Greene fan and I have always wanted to watch Sonja Henie.I was not disappointed.This movie is definitely worth seeing and/or buying. It has wonderful, catchy swingy tunes and a great cast. Sure, the story is cliché, but weren't most musicals like that back then? Well, it is actually a little bit more original than others, because Sonja wraps packages at a department store, and after meeting her, and to keep her away from his jealous wife (Gypsy Rose Lee a.k.a Louise Hovick), Caesar Romero, the son of the big department store Sonja works for, sends her to fictional Plymouth University as a "living mannequin" to promote their store's women's' sporting goods section. While there, Sonja befriends student Buddy Ebsen and his girlfriend Mary Dwight (Joan Davis), does some enjoyable skate routines (best one is COULD YOU PASS IN LOVE? first sung by Buddy and Joan, then skated by Sonja and a chorus of skating guys in bowler hats), gets tricked by a nasty Southern girl who is a bad ice skater (played nicely by Patricia Wilder) gets accused of being involved in a scandal (courtesy of Gypsy Rose), and falls in love with super-duper handsome senior Richard Greene. They and others sing a very lovely ballad on a hayride. (I don't know the name.) But it's very charming, and it was stuck in my head for a week after I watched it. The musical numbers are fun, though they come nowhere near MGM or early Busby Berkeley musical splendor. Sonja dos live up to her name as great ice skater, though. In the big production "Alice in Wonderland" finale, she shines, and the costumes and music and charming. The other big musical number, I'VE GOT A DATE WITH A DREAM, showcases a myriad of showgirls wearing beautiful furs and evening gowns, and other fashionable outfits, and a tenor who sings the song admirably. Later into the number, Buddy and Joan do a short, comedic rendition of the song.In all, MY LUCKY STAR is a good way to pass the time and a good film to start with if you want to explore the works of Sonja Henie.