Like "Holiday Affair" from a few years later, "Lucky Partners" is an example of what I have come to think of as the "third wheel" type of romantic comedy. The basic plot is that a handsome, charismatic stranger (inevitably played by a major A-list Hollywood star) comes into the life of the heroine who is instantly smitten by him, even though she already has a decent, dependable steady boyfriend (inevitably played by a minor B-list Hollywood character actor). Equally inevitably the first name above the title gets the girl, but nobody ever gets emotionally hurt.
The heroine here is Jean Newton, a young New Yorker. The hero is David Grant, a British painter who wishes Jean good luck when they pass in the street one morning, even though they are strangers to one another. (It later turns out that "David Grant" is not his real name, but for clarity that is how I will refer to him). The boyfriend is her decent, dependable and steady fiancé Freddie. When Jean later unexpectedly receives a gift of an expensive dress, she decides that David is her lucky charm and him to partner her on a sweepstake ticket. He agrees only on condition that, if they win, she will accompany him on a trip around America ("as brother and sister, naturally") before settling down to married life in Poughkeepsie, a town here portrayed as the epitome of respectable but dull middle-class conformity.
The film then explores the complicated sequence of events which ensues from Jean and David's agreement. I won't set out what all those events are, but of course they end up with Jean and David falling in love and Freddie being quietly dumped. But then, you could have worked that out from the cast-list. A major star like Ronald Colman was never going to lose out to the then unknown Jack Carson. (Carson, who plays Freddie, was later to become a famous actor in his own right, but in 1940 he was a relative nobody). The fact that Colman was twenty years older than Ginger Rogers makes no difference; older man/younger woman screen romances were even commoner in the Hollywood of the forties than they are today. And, of course, the fact that Jean already has a fiancé makes even less difference. Freddie may be thoroughly decent, dependable and steady, but he is also thoroughly dull and boring and, even worse, an insurance executive from Poughkeepsie. The financial services industry was clearly regarded as proverbial for its dullness a generation before Monty Python's "accountant" sketch, and in America Poughkeepsie seems to be regarded in the same light. (One thing I learned from this film is that "Poughkeepsie" is not pronounced in the way one might expect from the spelling).
I don't really care for "third wheel" comedies as a genre, partly because I know all too well (from bitter personal experience) that this sort of scenario does not generally lead to the sort of "happy ever after" ending which Hollywood would have us believe in. Nevertheless, I liked "Lucky Partners" more than something like "Holiday Affair". The plot is clearly absurd- I cannot for one moment imagine any young woman behaving in real life in the way that Jean does in this movie. Any man who makes the sort of proposition that David does to an engaged woman would be lucky if he only got his face slapped and not reported to the police for harassment. This, however, is not real life but a rom-com, a movie genre which has never been a particularly realistic one, so there is little point in complaining about the improbable nature of its plot. Colman and Rogers play their roles well enough to make the age difference seem less important; it helps that at 49 Colman was still dapper and handsome.
I was surprised to discover that the film was directed by Lewis Milestone, best known to me as director of the very serious-minded anti-war epic, "All Quiet on the Western Front". Milestone, however, was clearly a more versatile director than I had given him credit for, because here he manages to make something quite watchable and at times amusing out of a silly story. I particularly liked the closing court scene, even though the proceedings bear very little resemblance to any real court case. 6/10
A goof. A radio broadcast of the Epsom Derby plays an important role in the story. The result of the race is announced less than a minute after "they're off!". In fact, the Derby generally takes between 2½ and 3 minutes to run; the record time is 2 minutes 31 seconds.
The heroine here is Jean Newton, a young New Yorker. The hero is David Grant, a British painter who wishes Jean good luck when they pass in the street one morning, even though they are strangers to one another. (It later turns out that "David Grant" is not his real name, but for clarity that is how I will refer to him). The boyfriend is her decent, dependable and steady fiancé Freddie. When Jean later unexpectedly receives a gift of an expensive dress, she decides that David is her lucky charm and him to partner her on a sweepstake ticket. He agrees only on condition that, if they win, she will accompany him on a trip around America ("as brother and sister, naturally") before settling down to married life in Poughkeepsie, a town here portrayed as the epitome of respectable but dull middle-class conformity.
The film then explores the complicated sequence of events which ensues from Jean and David's agreement. I won't set out what all those events are, but of course they end up with Jean and David falling in love and Freddie being quietly dumped. But then, you could have worked that out from the cast-list. A major star like Ronald Colman was never going to lose out to the then unknown Jack Carson. (Carson, who plays Freddie, was later to become a famous actor in his own right, but in 1940 he was a relative nobody). The fact that Colman was twenty years older than Ginger Rogers makes no difference; older man/younger woman screen romances were even commoner in the Hollywood of the forties than they are today. And, of course, the fact that Jean already has a fiancé makes even less difference. Freddie may be thoroughly decent, dependable and steady, but he is also thoroughly dull and boring and, even worse, an insurance executive from Poughkeepsie. The financial services industry was clearly regarded as proverbial for its dullness a generation before Monty Python's "accountant" sketch, and in America Poughkeepsie seems to be regarded in the same light. (One thing I learned from this film is that "Poughkeepsie" is not pronounced in the way one might expect from the spelling).
I don't really care for "third wheel" comedies as a genre, partly because I know all too well (from bitter personal experience) that this sort of scenario does not generally lead to the sort of "happy ever after" ending which Hollywood would have us believe in. Nevertheless, I liked "Lucky Partners" more than something like "Holiday Affair". The plot is clearly absurd- I cannot for one moment imagine any young woman behaving in real life in the way that Jean does in this movie. Any man who makes the sort of proposition that David does to an engaged woman would be lucky if he only got his face slapped and not reported to the police for harassment. This, however, is not real life but a rom-com, a movie genre which has never been a particularly realistic one, so there is little point in complaining about the improbable nature of its plot. Colman and Rogers play their roles well enough to make the age difference seem less important; it helps that at 49 Colman was still dapper and handsome.
I was surprised to discover that the film was directed by Lewis Milestone, best known to me as director of the very serious-minded anti-war epic, "All Quiet on the Western Front". Milestone, however, was clearly a more versatile director than I had given him credit for, because here he manages to make something quite watchable and at times amusing out of a silly story. I particularly liked the closing court scene, even though the proceedings bear very little resemblance to any real court case. 6/10
A goof. A radio broadcast of the Epsom Derby plays an important role in the story. The result of the race is announced less than a minute after "they're off!". In fact, the Derby generally takes between 2½ and 3 minutes to run; the record time is 2 minutes 31 seconds.