For some values of luck

TCM's schedule for most of the morning and afternoon tomorrow, July 21, is films with have the word "lucky" or a variation thereof in the title. One that's been sitting on my DVR is Lucky Me; not having seen it before, I once again wanted to watch a movie in order to be able to do a full-length post on it. The movie comes up at 2:15 PM tomorrow, so now is your chance to watch it, too.

Doris Day stars as Candy Williams, opening with a well-choreographed musical number singing a song about superstition, before winding up backstage at a theater in Miami. She's part of a troupe called the Parisian Pretties managed by Hap Schneider (Phil Silvers), who also appears in the troupe. They put on a sort of vaudeville revival show with song and dance acts but no overarching plot. It's a nostalgic sort of show that time has passed by. Audiences have passed it by, too, causing the show to be canceled and leaving Hap and Candy stranded in Miami together with two other members of the troup, Duke (Eddie Foy, Jr.) and Flo (Nancy Walker).

Hap, playing fast and loose with the truth, comes up with a scheme to get a free dinner at the hotel across the street involving a cop friend of theirs "arresting" them just before the check comes; however, the scheme fails when the cop in question gets rotated out on his shift so is no longer there to arrest them. Since this was a fancy hotel, they're going to have to pay their way out of the bill by doing various forms of work for the hotel. This is how we get to the male lead. One of the guests in the hotel is Dick Carson (Robert Cummings). He's a Tin Pan Alley songwriter who's had a fair deal of success writing for other people. But he wants to strike out on his own and write a complete show of his own. To that end, he also needs a backer, and thinks he might have one in Texas oilman Otis Thayer (Bill Goodwin). Otis has a daughter Lorraie (Martha Hyer) who is kinda-sort Dick's girlfriend, with the obvious implied threat that if she's not his girlfriend, he's not getting her daddy's money.

One evening at a gas station, Candy runs into Dick but doesn't know him. For various reasons, especially involving the fact that he doesn't want more people trying to audition themselves for him since he already had to deal with Flo doing just that, Dick passes himself off as a mechanic at the station named Eddie. From here, it's not too difficult to guess what happens the rest of the way. First, Dick and Candy fall in love although Dick has to keep up the ruse. Then, Candy learns the truth from a meeting between Dick and Hap, who does recognize Dick. This causes Candy to believe Dick is just trying to take advantage of her. Worse is that when they patch things up and Candy sings for Dick, Lorraine finds out. Lorraine decides that if she can't have Dick, she won't let her father back the show.

This leads to a finale at a birthday party for Otis where Dick was planning to play some of the songs for Otis. Dick decides to abandon the show, and Candy and her friends come up with an idea to put everything right. This involves crashing the party and coming up with a ruse to get Lorraine away from the party just long enough for Candy to sing some of the songs Dick was writing. Unfortunately, they can't keep Lorraine away long enough, although as you'll have figured out the film is bound to have a happy ending. You'll also know who ends up together in the last reel.

Lucky Me is, like the show the Parisian Pretties put on, a hoary old chestnut of a story. The story idea might not have been a bad one in the early 1930s, although it's decidedly dated here. It also doesn't help that Doris Day gets a subpar set of songs to sing. Day tries, and the film's weaknesses are definitely not her fault. But there's a reason Lucky Me got lukewarm reviews when it was released. Doris Day fans will probably still enjoy it, but anybody else watching it will see fairly quickly why it got those tepid reviews.

Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell

Gina Lollobrigida died at the beginning of 2023, and a few months later TCM had a tribute to her with a night of her movies. With Veterans' Day coming up, I decided I'd finally get around to watching Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell and doing a post on it here.

As the opening credits play out over scenes of Mrs. Carla Campbell (Gina Lollobrigida) riding through the Italian countrysides in one of those snazzy convertible sports cars that seemed to be a thing in the 1960s. That, and a horrendously dated song sung by one of those sub-par singers I'd never heard of. Eventually, Carla drives into her home town of San Forino where she sees a banner reading in English, "Welcome Back". The joke is that she thinks the sign is for her, until a second banner under it is unfurled, welcoming the 293rd squadron of the US Air Force.

The squadron was stationed in San Forino when the Americans occupied Italy presumably just after the end of World War II, although the dates don't really work out. It's a big anniversary of their time in the country, and instead of having a reunion every year like other groups did, they decided to have one big bash and use the money to aid the locals in San Fornio with a chapel. Indeed, the movie cuts to a shot of a plane landing in Rome and introducing us to three of the Americans returning for the reunion:

Phil Silvers plays Cpl. Newman, who has a wife Shirley (Shelley Winters) and three children of the bratty, precocious type that is a standard if very annoying character type in movies like this. Lt. Justin Young (Peter Lawford) seems to have hit a difficult patch in his marriage to Lauren (Marian Moses), and then there's Sgt. Walter Braddock (Telly Savalas), who jokes that he begged his wife Fritzie (Lee Grant) not to come along. The fact that each of them has a family is a problem, as we really learn fairly quickly in the movie.

Carla has a daughter Gia (Janet Margolin), who was conceived while the Americans were occupying San Farino. And Carla slept around a lot, specifically with the three members of the squadron I mentioned above. The only thing is, she has no idea which one was the father, and she slept with them just before the squadron left, so by the time she found out she was pregnant, they had moved on and were unavailable to marry her, which is why they wound up with families in the States.

But Carla made lemonade out of lemons, telling each of the three men that she was pregnant, implying of course that they were the father, since none of the men knows the others slept with Carla. All three offered to provide child support, although you have to wonder how none of the wives knew their husbands were sending checks to Italy for 20 years or so. So all of the men also have to keep their wives from finding out the truth while trying to make amends with Carla.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I found Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell to be fairly dated and not nearly as funny as the premise might lead you to believe. Instead, pretty much everybody winds up a bit shrill and when the material tries hard to be funny, it's just too wacky instead of funny in a good way. Come September, which I reviewed earlier out of the films in the Lollobrigida tribute, is a much better romantic comedy and you should probably watch that one given the chance instead of Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell.