Lucky Lady (1975)
By Jeremy Breneman and Eric Grigs | December 5, 2020
NEGLECTED FILM REDEMPTION
a series of conversations about forgotten and under-the-radar cinema.
Lucky Lady is a comedy-drama film about three inexperienced liquor smugglers who take on organized crime and the U.S. Coast Guard during 1930s Prohibition, while falling in love along the way.
Eric: We are all lucky ladies to have this Stanley Donen film with stellar leads (Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Hackman) released for the first time on DVD by Shout Factory. Even the supporting cast has muscle, including Robby Benson and John Hillerman. On top of this, two songs from Kander and Ebb! How could this movie possibly have disappeared from the public’s consciousness like the organized crime baddies whose boats sink to the bottom of the sea in the climactic shootout with our heroic band of bootleggers?
Jeremy: While it’s not a particularly good movie, it’s loaded with so much charm. And of course there is a very clear queer element to it!
Eric: Was this your first viewing of it?
Jeremy: I actually saw this on TV when I was young. It was a regular movie on the DC affiliate when I was a kid. My memory of it is pretty sparse and I am sure it was edited down (I don’t recall Burt and Gene in bed with Liza at all). Watching it now, I can see how this film was edited to death.
Eric: Many people blame the film’s failure on Stanley Donen’s direction and the editing. (Reynolds is on record saying that he believed Minnelli should have been a lock for a Best Actress Oscar, but the movie ended up veering toward too much comedy.) Although it’s hard to fault a genius director who made some incredible contributions to American cinema. I just watched Give a Girl a Break, where he directed a different Reynolds (Debbie—and where a young Bob Fosse shows up!) and like Lucky Lady, it’s not one of his greats, but a very enjoyable watch.
Jeremy: Exactly. Where should this fit into Stanley Donen’s rather stellar career as a director of some of the greatest movie musicals of all time? Singin’ in the Rain, The Pajama Game, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, It’s Always Fair Weather, and On the Town to name a few. He also was quite adept in the thriller genre with Charade and Arabesque. One of my favorite Donen films was the Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney dramedy Two for the Road from just eight years before. It begs one to ask “Why Lucky Lady of all films for a director of Donen’s stature to direct?” Perhaps it combines so many genres of which he was so comfortable? It has dancing! It has suspense! It has complex relationships! It has comedy! I kind of wonder if maybe it had a little too much of everything?
Eric: You’re right it has everything and still somehow needs something. They say great art is more than just the sum of its parts, but maybe this movie is just a lot of really great separate parts put together that don’t always come together. There are some pretty abrupt tonal shifts that go from musical comedy to a young Benson getting violently gunned down. I don’t mind as much as others do when a movie throws everything at the screen, but modern films have ingrained in us the idea that you must pick a box and stay within it or face the consequences! I mean, isn’t that actually more like life? One minute you’re laughing, the next you’re crying.
Jeremy: That abrupt gun down was a strange scene for me too, followed by the wounding of Gene and Burt and then back to slapstick comedy...then a big action sequence. But for me, it really felt like Donen wasn’t sure what to do with this film and I suspect the queer subtexts were risky, even for 1975.
Eric: Speaking of made-for-TV edits that lessen the queer relationship, I wonder if this is one of the first movies to present a throuple in the way it did? Of course, there are scenes that are played for comedy, like the confusion on the real estate agent’s face when the three are buying a house together or when the hotel staff help all three check into one room. However, on a deeper level, their relationship makes total sense—everything these misfits do is about forging their own path outside of acceptable society. So we’re invited along for the ride to watch and see what a lark life can be, even with all the ups and downs. The audience is expected to quickly accept the non-traditional relationship as their characters move from strictly “business partners in bed together” to literally in bed together.
Jeremy: On the topic of the queer love triangle, didn’t we get a glimpse of this in Cabaret just a few years before? Wasn’t Liza married to Peter Allen around the time of this film? Is there little wonder, aside from her relation to Judy Garland, why she has such a huge queer following by our generation? Granted, I once had a younger gay man ask me, quite innocently, “What’s the big deal with Liza Minnelli?”
Eric: Even though this isn’t Liza’s finest work, I submit exhibit A of her magic to the court of public opinion: the Kander & Ebb song “Get While The Getting Is Good” right at the beginning of the film. (I miss well-crafted songs just randomly inserted in movies that are not musicals!) It’s a great song by itself but then she imbues it with this lazy performance in character at a hole-in-the-wall bar at the end of the world. I was howling the way she throws in the self-aware “Jesus” eye roll during the song. It’s in those moments where Liza becomes larger than life on the screen for me.
Jeremy: I would be curious to know the inspiration of the screenwriters to include the throuple element. I actually thought it was rather poignant. It’s as if both men “complete” things for Liza and themselves, if not entirely sexually at least emotionally. When you look at it, who else would have them? Of course TV stations didn’t care about that. They just ran their carefully edited version...which takes away an entire dimension to the characters and story if you ask me.
Eric: Everything seems to come back to the edits. I think there’s a great movie in here somewhere. Although anyone who watches it probably is editing things out in their mind or wishing other things were added. It had no less than three different endings shot of which I am aware. The original ending had Gene and Burt gunned down by the feds, leaving Liza alone. She was telling the story ten years later about two men she loved. Test audiences hated it. Another was filmed. And after production had ended, Liza was in Europe shooting her next movie. Gene and Burt were flown overseas and they filmed a scene of the three of them as old folks still in bed together in their golden years, safe and sound. After all that, it wasn’t used either—reportedly because the geriatric makeup was so terrible. Thinking about those other two endings, I think we actually lucked out with the one we got. I feel like it was the best resolution.
Jeremy: The ending is probably is the best we could hope for. There is almost a sense of “but wait, there’s more.” Well, there kind of was, as Liza, Burt, and Benson would reunite in the 1987 action thriller Rent-a-Cop. Now THAT deserves its own article!
Eric: Rent-a-Cop! Yes, that must be a future film discussion and analysis!
Jeremy: For me the highlight of the film wasn’t Liza as much as Burt Reynolds. I felt he’s utterly charming in this role. It seemed almost atypical for him at the time. He seemed like a regular Joe who somehow stumbles into smuggling and a very complicated love triangle. I couldn’t stop watching him and usually I’m pretty immune to his charms.
Eric: Burt does play slightly against type. He’s suave here but not really ever in control of this love triangle, or even the business side of things. He plays it for comedy throughout. Reynolds actually turned down the Gene Hackman character Kibby (originally George Segal was cast) because he wanted the “silly part over the tough guy role.” I however, unlike you, am a sucker for Burt’s charms. I will watch him in the most awful movies and still love him.
Jeremy: At the time of Lucky Lady was released, the movie industry was in such a weird state of post-Vietnam era entertainment. I think this was attempting to be purely escapist fare. The “caper film” was one of those trendy film brands of that period. There also seemed to be a nostalgia for the “simpler times” in 70s film. I’m thinking of The Sting, The Way We Were, American Graffiti, and the like. This film seems to among that brand of picture, even in its rather obtuse execution. It’s neither a musical, a comedy, or really even a drama. It doesn’t fit a clear category.
Eric: Your comments remind me that once the Apple TV algorithm suggested moves I might like under the category named weirdly enough “Botched and Bungled Capers,” of which Lucky Lady would fit. (Side note: I owned every one of those movies it recommended, so somehow the caper film has wormed its way into my heart. Probably because of seeing The Great Muppet Caper parody of the genre at an early age.)
Jeremy: The Great Muppet Caper! Now I’d never even thought of that as a parody...and now I won’t be able to get that out of my head! We were such 70s children, weren’t we? The caper film had a long history of imperfection, so Lucky Lady probably doesn’t go down as the worst of the genre. Isn’t it interesting Burt Reynold’s career would be almost defined by that genre for quite a long stretch after this film?
Eric: Don’t get me started on Cannonball Run! Speaking of bungled productions, there’s one fun extra included on the DVD: an original featurette which shows how the filming of the climactic battle of ships pushed the movie way over budget and what a real-life disaster it was. Donen’s accounting of trouble stabilizing cameras on the water, ships all in motion going different speeds causing timing problems, nowhere to put the film crew on small boats getting in the shots, the stars getting seasick, and on and on. It made me appreciate how difficult this project was—maybe a bit doomed from the get-go. But I loved that they all persevered anyway. Maybe it’s the lesson of Lucky Lady—and 2020. Luck can’t always be on your side. Always aim for greatness but sometimes be ok with just good enough and roll with whatever comes your way!
The gods of pop history smiled upon Jeremy Breneman and Eric Grigs when they crossed paths online, and they have been obsessing together over obscure curiosities ever since. Past entries in this discussion series have included The Killing of Sister George and Hilda Crane.