Lucky Lady
- 5 minutes ago
- 3 min read
One of the most troubled productions of the mid 70's, LUCKY LADY proved to be anything but at the box office.
Hot off of her Best Actress win for "Cabaret" in 1972, Liza Minnelli was very careful about her next big screen project. Perhaps lured by the chance to work with legendary (but aging) Director Stanley Donen (Singing in the Rain, Two for the Road) and the two biggest box office actors of the time, Burt Reynolds & Gene Hackman, she leapt in with both feet.
You can't say that the three of them don't give 100%, but they're working from a very bad screenplay by married writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. These two define HIT and MISS on a grand scale. They gave us "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "American Graffiti", but also delivered "Howard the Duck". This one spends a lot of time on the water alongside Howard.
Minnelli plays 1930's nightclub singer Claire, performing at her husband's Tijuana cantina that also serves as a base for their rum running operation. When her never seen husband is killed, she recruits Walker (Burt Reynolds) for the next liquor run.
When everything goes wrong, a stranger named Kibby (Gene Hackman) makes their operation a trio and the three become the rum running team of choice between Mexico and the states.
Thankfully for us and the movie, John Hillerman (Blazing Saddles, Chinatown) plays Mob Kingpin Christy McTeague, a lethal, stuffy gangster boss who's not happy the trio are horning in on his action. Hillerman delivers every line with perfect droll contempt. Every time he's on screen, it feels like he's wandered in from a much better movie.
Our leads have absolutely zero chemistry on screen. Minnelli has been vocal, especially in her recent biography, that Hackman talked down to her the entire time they made the film, making her feel that she hadn't earned the star billing. She loved working with Reynolds and the two of them have the closest thing to chemistry that you'll find, but it's low wattage.
Poor Minnelli is stuck with a screenplay that has her yelling most of the time and Donen has her playing for the back row. Liza has shown incredible presence in "Cabaret" and "Arthur" with a much more still, more quiet and present delivery. Less is more and she knows it, but not given the opportunity here.
Reynolds is just enjoying himself and Hackman is the journeyman bringing everything he can to the underwritten role. Hackman shows flashes of the comic timing he'd put on full display later in Richard Donner's "Superman". This was his biggest paycheck at the time at $1.5 million.
Poor Geoffrey Lewis (Maverick, Tango & Cash) makes Liza's performance look positively reserved. I thought he was going to stroke out from screaming at everyone. His Coast Guard officer is on a quest to take down our rum running trio, but his crew feels like McHale's Navy.
Huyck and Katz never find a tone for this lumbering wannabe epic.
Is it a musical? Nope. Cabaret composers Kander and Ebb created two songs for Liza to perform, but they're treated like throwaways and she only performs one on screen.
Is it a comedy or a drama? It tries to be both but fails in the middle ground, serving up violent deaths of major characters and then awkwardly going for laughs a moment later. Huh?
Way too late, the film hits its stride with a fun, large scale air and sea battle between our trio, alongside their partners in 43 boats of all sizes, against the mob. That 15 minutes serves up plenty of laughs and some decent action, but then saddles itself with a horrible music score by Ralph Burns that sounds like leftover tracks from a Brady Bunch episode.
It's been said that Steven Spielberg was offered this film as his first big screen feature, but he chose to make "Jaws" instead. Great choice, Steven.
In his autobiography, Burt Reynolds said that Donen made a complete mess of the movie in the editing room and destroyed Minnelli's performance. If Reynolds is right, it would explain some of the very strange and abrupt changes in tone throughout the film. Even Hackman, who clearly didn't connect with Minnelli during the production defended her and said that Donen had destroyed the film with poor editing.
It's hard to imagine that there is a great film somewhere between the one I watched and the film on the cutting room floor, but there very well may have been a better one.
LUCKY LADY was 20th Century Fox's big Christmas release of 1975 and sank quickly to obscurity after bombing badly.
Some things are better left at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. It gets a waterlogged D.
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