1975 - LUCKY LADY, somebody forgot to clean the camera lens

20th Century Fox's big Christmas release for 1975.  How did Stanley Donen the director get mixed up in this mess?  His last couple of films had been disappointments but was he that desperate for work?

  A comedy/adventure tale about rum runners along the Mexican and Southern California coast, it had three big stars and a big budget. Geoffrey Unsworth the director of photography had photographed 2001: A Space Odyssey. What was the thinking behind having him shoot the film through a hazy filter to approximate the look of the 1920's?  The actors seem blurry and out of focus throughout the film. The viewer can hardly see the expensive art deco sets through all the fog.

 

   
Was Liza Minnelli  the right person to cast as a sexy tough girl cabaret singer that two men are in love with? The idea to have her play a Jean Harlow type means someone thought she was as sexy as Harlow.  Did anyone actually look at a picture of Jean Harlow and think Minnelli looks like Harlow?  Minnelli acts looks like she's on some kind of controlled substance through out the film.  Apparently the director Stanley Donen didn't have the guts to tell Minnelli that her performance stunk.
 

Burt Reynolds always wanted to be Cary Grant or Clark Gable but whenever he tried to do light comedy he always came off as a pathetic wimp.  Reynolds the big star of 1970's redneck car chase movies was way out of his element in Lucky Lady. The studio apparently paid Gene Hackman a lot of money to be in this thing. Hackman's the Spencer Tracy best friend role in this movie. He brings an intensity more suited to a Eugene O'Neill tragedy but at least he turns in a decent performance.  

  
The real behind the scenes evildoers of this movie were the writers, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. They had been associates of George Lucas before anyone figured out Lucas maybe had a little less  talent then Hollywood thought. They co-wrote American Graffiti, so the thinking must have been to get two contemporary writers to update a 1930's type of film.   However no one must have actually read the script before they gave the green light to make this film.   Had 20th Century fox had a magical crystal ball they would have found out that Huyck and Katz would go on to write the worst of the Indiana Jones films and  the notorious Howard the Duck.

Apparently the filmmakers shot three different endings for the movie because they couldn't figure out how to end it.

The running time is 118 minutes.