Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Lucky Lady

I mentioned last week that I'm fond of books and movies about the early days of Hollywood. Well, I like rum-running stories, too, along with almost anything else set during Prohibition or the Depression.  LUCKY LADY is another famous flop that seems like it should have been a successful movie. It was directed by Stanley Donen, certainly no slouch, written by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who were hot screenwriters at the time, and starred Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, and Liza Minnelli, with a supporting cast that included Geoffrey Lewis and John Hillerman. But nobody seemed to like it and people stayed away in droves. Not me, though. I went to see it, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The inspiration for it seems to have been movies like BOOM TOWN and SAN FRANCISCO, and while I'd never claim that the pairing of Hackman and Reynolds rises to the level of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, I thought LUCKY LADY was a likable throwback to that era. Liza Minelli was an interesting young actress in those days, too, and certainly successful in movies like CABARET and THE STERILE CUCKOO. This is another one I'd like to see again sometime.