Cary Grant.
As an actor, he retired in 1966 after the film Walk, Don’t Run, the first film in a couple of decades where he was not the romantic lead.
He lived another two decades after that, though, and even into his ‘80s, he remained a handsome, charming man that caused the hearts of women of all ages to beat faster
Personally, I discovered Cary Grant movies back in the 1970s when several of his Alfred Hitchcock films were re-released on the big screen.
I got to see To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest the way they were meant to be seen and as much as any woman, I, too, fell in love with Cary Grant (Grace Kelly, as well, but we aren’t here to talk about her).
Like any actor who worked in Hollywood’s heyday, Grant’s career had its ups and downs and many of his lesser starring films simply do not hold up today as well as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Charade, or even Destination Tokyo.
Mr. Lucky is not one of Cary’s major films, nor has it ever been a favorite of mine. It’s one of a series of light propaganda pictures made by Hollywood during the war years. Warner Bros.was particularly good at them, often portraying gangsters turning patriotic to help the war effort. (See 1942’s All Through the Night starring Humphrey Bogart.)
RKO produced Mr. Lucky, though, with Grant playing a suave, amoral gambler named Joe Adams who cooks up an increasingly complicated plot to avoid the draft and keep his gambling ship afloat. (It’s never mentioned how he came to be drafted in the first place when he’s clearly English.)
At one point, Grant’s character says, “I’m a gambler, not a gangster,” but then he spends most of the picture attempting to swindle a ladies’ war aid group out of the profits of a gambling concession he talks them into holding for charity.
Actress Laraine Day, 16 years Grant’s junior, is cute as all get out and gives a winning performance as the charity activist our anti-hero falls for. Unlike some of Grant’s more A-list co-stars in other productions, women like Katherine Hepburn or Myrna Loy, she doesn’t come across as his equal, though, thus leaving Grant’s personality overwhelming the picture. Not that that’s a bad thing. The two stars do have some nice flirty moments and a couple of well-played and interestingly-filmed romantic scenes. Ms. Day would later become better known for her association with baseball during her marriage to the legendary Leo Durocher.
Actor Alan Carney, later with the low-rent comedy duo, Brown and Carney, is fun as Grant’s loyal but goofy sidekick, and the always welcome but always slimy Paul Stewart (later the voice of Hanna-Barbera’s Mighty Mightor!) is predictably in character here.
Overall, Mr. Lucky is a mixed bag. Some highlights include an atmospheric opening, a funny running gag with Australian rhyming slang (which sounds like Cockney rhyming—which Grant would have grown up with—slang to me), Adams learning to knit, and some tricky coin flip action. Fairly lighthearted for most of its run, though, besides the romance, it’s also a bit of a mystery and a thriller. There’s some fairly heavy drama, some gunplay, blood, and even a deep religious interlude. The episodic nature of the movie works against fully enjoying the picture, in spite of its good points. There are also a few too many false endings, and the one we finally get feels scripted.
Directed by H.C. Potter, who would do better by his star a few years later with Blandings, IMDB lists no less than seven writers (!), four of whom went uncredited. I suspect the problems with Mr. Lucky are of the “too many cooks” variety.
The restoration has left the film looking near flawless. Extras include a theatrical trailer, the Lux Radio Theater Broadcast with Grant and Laraine Day, and the Screen Director’s Playhouse with Grant and director H.C. Potter.
If you’re a Cary Grant fan, you might enjoy Mr. Lucky, but if you have yet to discover this legendary movie star, there are many better entry-level choices.


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