Lucky Partners (1940)

Pretty Good

Just perfect...

I'll tell you why so serious

How sad is this?

After spending all evening with a family friend,I decided to end the night by watching a film. Planning to view the French Neo-Noir Mea Culpa,I stumbled on a rare RKO title about to leave BBC iPlayer,which led to me trying my luck.The plot:Walking down a street, Jean Newton bumps into a man who randomly wishes her good luck. Taking the words to heart,Newton starts experiencing good luck. Tracking down her lucky charm,Newton finds out that his name is David Grant. Wanting to see how far this luck can go,Newton gets her fiancé to stand aside and let her and Grant put a bet on the Sweepstakes. Playing his own luck,Grant says he will agree to the idea,only if Newton goes on a holiday with him. View on the film:Turning His Girl Friday down for the role, Ginger Rogers gives a sparkling performance as Newton,with Rogers delivering the Screwball Comedy dialogue with a sweetness,and giving Newton a light romantic simmering. Bouncing off Jack Carson hilariously playing Newton's geeky boyfriend, Ronald Colman gives a terrific performance as Grant,who blocks Newton's attempts to find out more about him,by Colman giving Grant a slippery, gentlemen smoothness.Getting Grant and Newton in the same bed with stylish spilt-screen, co-writer(with George Haight/Edwin Justus Mayer/ Franz Schulz/Allan Scott and John Van Druten) director Lewis Milestone & cinematographer Robert De Grasse keep the Screwball Comedy atmosphere whip-smart, with pristine pans catching the reactions from Newton and Grants playful exchanges. Playing their luck in adapting Sacha Guitry & Fernand Rivers film Bonne chance!,the writers keep the first encounters of Newton and Grant deliciously lively,with their deals on good luck leading to funny exchanges with those who don't have their lucky hands. While the ending slyly mocks rules of the Hays Code, the decision to end the movie in a courtroom leads to the flick losing a spring in its step,due to the dialogue getting used to untangle the knots in the plot,as the luck runs out.

A vintage Hollywood movie I must admit I'd never heard of before that I was pleased to catch on very early morning terrestrial TV, helmed by a celebrated director, Lewis Milestone and boasting two top stars in Ronald Colman and Ginger Rogers. Shame it was something of a let-down.It starts nicely enough with a fortuitous meeting between Colman and Rogers after the latter has started her mundane work day by receiving a gift of an expensive coat and benefits again from a lottery tip-off from Colman's David Grant character. I hoped it would continue the theme of fortuitous events happening throughout the film but unfortunately the film goes downhill from there with Colman's somewhat mysterious beachcomber character propositioning Rogers to accompany him on a trip to Niagara, coming between her and her boorish fiancé played by Jack Carson, in the process.So the mismatched couple, booked in as brother and sister, naturally end up in adjoining rooms in a posh hotel, before the fiancé turns up to make trouble for them which eventually sees them all end up on trial in a lengthy concluding courtroom scene for various minor misdemeanours, only for true love to conquer all, as Colman is revealed to be a reclusive famous artist in hiding after an apparently infamous trial about the morality of some of his earlier work.I know screwball comedies are meant to throw together unlikely individuals, be based on threadbare plots and large coincidence and be fast-paced and full of wisecracks but the most important of these, the last, just isn't delivered here. Poor Ginger, only recently on leave from years as old Fred's girl, has to canoodle with another much older man and good-looking and suave on the face of it as he is, you can't describe Colman's character as anything other than weird and one that a single woman most probably shouldn't let be her chaperone. That said her boyfriend Carson hardly seems like a catch either, being the brusque, money-grabbing, controlling type.There are some eccentrics dotted about in the background too like the two stereotypical Italian restaurateurs in whose eaterie they first meet, an odd selection of hotel employees, a strange elderly couple who Rogers christens Peter Possum and Jenny Wren who in truth can't be that much older than Colman even as they rhapsodise about the younger duo personifying love's young dream and finally a long-winded judge at the trial, but Preston Sturges this definitely isn't. All the explanations for Colman's odd-ball behaviour are held back until the last reel and then delivered in an unconvincing hurry at the same time as we're expected to believe in the even more unlikely romance of the two leads.What more to say, well, Rogers looks lovely, especially in her evening gown although unfortunately she stops short of actually dancing even a few steps, Colman is certainly smooth if lacking warmth and director Milestone has some nice touches like a scene showing both sides of the dividing doors as the couple argue and the courtroom scene where he shows successive witnesses sat in the same seat giving their testimony, but it has to be said, it's all rather dull, with no real laughs, curiously uninvolving characters and on the whole adds up to a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Lucky Partners has Ronald Colman as a reclusive artist with a dodgy past who wishes Ginger Rogers good luck while she passes him on the street.Rogers gets an expensive dress that is being discarded to a house she visits. She thinks Colman is good luck and they cook up a scheme where they would go halves in some kind of Irish sweepstake's.Rogers wants the money to go on honeymoon with her beau Jack Carson. Colman wants to take Rogers on some kind of platonic honeymoon and he manages to persuade dunderhead Jack that this is a good idea.Of course on their road trip Colman and Rogers find out that they love each other and Colman decides to scarper but ends up getting arrested and it all ends in a courtroom showdown when it is revealed that Colman is a rather famous and notorious painter.Director Lewis Milestone won an Oscar for directing All Quiet on the Western Front, so maybe not someone who you might think would show a deft touch with a romantic comedy and truth to be told he makes heavy going of it.Colman looks too old to be sweeping Rogers off her feet and there is little chemistry between them. The courtroom scenes at the end was just farcical giving the movie a left turn.

Lucky Partners was the first of two films that Ronald Colman together with director Lewis Milestone signed on to make at RKO Pictures. For box office sake he was lucky to get Ginger Rogers who was their top moneymaking female star to be the leading lady. Though their styles don't quite mesh, it's a pleasant enough bit of viewing.Colman is a reclusive artist and Ginger is a bookseller in Greenwich Village of the Forties, then as now a home and haven for non-conformist spirits. Maybe in another neighborhood a story like this just couldn't happen.Just one fine day as Colman passes Rogers on the street he wishes her a casual 'good luck'. When she gets the gift of an expensive coat that someone is discarding, Ginger decides that Colman apparently has a lucky streak going. What to do, but bet on the Irish Sweepstakes and take him in as a partner. That does not sit too well with fiancée Jack Carson who is playing a typical Jack Carson blowhard type.The whole business arrangement in fact the whole business eventually winds up before Judge Harry Davenport who sorts out the legal and romantic complications for all concerned. Very much like Judge Granville Bates does in My Favorite Wife which also came from RKO the same year and is a much better film.With possibly a different director like Preston Sturges or Mitch Leisen, or Leo McCarey, someone who is known for comedy Lucky Partners might have been a better film. As it is it's pleasant enough viewing for the fans of the leading players, but that's about all you can say for it.