Lucky Me (1954)

Jack Donohue directed this lifeless musical comedy starring Doris Day Robert Cummings the insufferable Phil Silvers Eddie Foy Jr. Nancy Walker and Martha Hyer (among others). While Ms. Day is her perky pretty self the screenplay by Irving Elinson Robert O’Brien and James O’Hanlon (from a story by O’Hanlon) and the songs are forgettable. The highlight of the film is Day’s “Superstition Song” at its beginning and it’s all down hill including the try-to-hard “High Hopes” number though Day’s exuberant performance of the climactic title song is memorable.

Day plays Candy Williams a superstitious yet talented newcomer among an ensemble of washed up losers led by obnoxious unfunny comedian Hap Schneider (Silvers) that includes Duke McGee (Foy Jr.) whose talent escapes even him and tap dancing Flo (Walker). The group has to work off their debt in a Miami hotel and kitchen after one of Hap’s gags goes wrong in its restaurant run by Anton (Marcel Dalio). Flo learns that Broadway’s hit writer Dick Carson (Robert Cummings) is in the house and that’s he’s about to cast a brand new show. But Candy meets Dick after an accidental circumstance which allows him to temporarily assume another name; this leads to a conflict between the two would be lovebirds when she finds out who he really is. However Hap arranges for Dick to witness Candy’s singing and dancing abilities and it seems that their romance will continue after he selects her to be the lead in his show. The only problem is that Dick had already been charming Lorraine Thayer (Hyer) hoping that her father Otis (Bill Goodwin) who owns forty-four oil wells in Texas would finance the show. Hayden Rorke plays Dick’s manager Tommy Arthur. So playboy Dick’s mixing business with pleasure with business comes back to bite him. When Dick decides to kick it all and leave for New York and Candy realizes that he’d loved her instead of Lorraine she and the others decide to crash the Thayer’s party incognito in hopes of convincing Otis to fund the show against his daughter’s wishes. Ray Teal appears uncredited as a party guest.

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