THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
US, 1948, 99 minutes, Black and white (partly tinted).
Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, Cecil Kellaway, Lee J. Cobb, Jayne Meadows, J.M. Kerrigan.
Directed by Henry Koster.
The Luck of the Irish, as the title might suggest, is a piece of blarney and whimsy.
Tyrone Power fits the bill as an American journalist who is visiting Ireland. By a waterfall, he encounters a leprechaun as well an Irish colleen. Cecil Kellaway (nominated for an Oscar for this role) is the leprechaun. Anne Baxter is the attractive Irish girl.
When the journalist returns to New York, remembering the Irish experience, he discovers Horace, the leprechaun, in New York and Nora, the colleen, on the subway. There is an American girl, Jayne Meadows, with her eye on marrying the journalist. The journalist, of course, has to juggle career as well as his happy Irish memories and the reality of life in New York.
The film is tongue-in-cheek, Cecil Kellaway obviously enjoying himself as a mischievous and humorous leprechaun. Tyrone Power and Anne Baxter had appeared together in The Razor’s Edge and work well as a romantic couple.
The film was directed by Henry Koster, the director of many films in Hollywood during the 1930s including a number with Deanna Durbin. In the mid-40s he made musicals at MGM including Music for Millions, Two Sisters From Boston and The Unfinished Dance. His films near The Luck of the Irish were The Bishop’s Wife with David Niven, Cary Grant and Loretta Young, and Loretta Young in Come to the Stable. He then made the Danny Kaye comedy, The Inspector General. He made a number of light comedies during the early 1950s for 20th Century Fox and then directed the first Cinemascope film, The Robe. He made a number of comedies and action adventures after this.
1. How entertaining a comedy, the tone and the meaning of the title?
2. How conventional a romantic comedy was the film? As an example of the 40s, sense of humour, romantic tone?
3. Black and white photography, Irish locations and atmosphere, New York and the contrast with America? The specific atmosphere of Ireland with magic, leprechauns, the Old World?
4. How credible was the plot? Did this matter? Was it suitable for this kind of light romantic comedy? The audience being able to identify with hero, heroine, leprechaun?
5. The hero as a typical American, a man of vision yet compromised? The accident of his being stranded in Ireland? His ambition in going to work for the politician? The impact of Ireland on him, the girl, the leprechaun and his dream? How well did he fit into the New York atmosphere of compromise in politics and journalism? His boss's daughter and her pushing him? The various sequences where he had to examine his conscience? The irony of the leprechaun arriving to be his conscience? How was he pressurised? How did he value the friendship of the Irish girl in New York? The Irish atmosphere of her friends? How good was his decision to defy the politician and speak out against him? the banquet? What future would he have? A hero to admire full of these traditional values?
6. How attractive was the heroine? An Irish girl in her setting, the surprise of seeing her in New York, her adaptation to New York, her point of view about the hero? career? The inevitable happy ending? A strong, kind of heroine for this film?
7. The character of the ambitious senator, his methods, ruthlessness, pressurising the hero, using his daughter's relationship? A man who needed to be defied?
8. The minor characters in Ireland, the hero's journalist friend, the leprechaun himself as the conscience, the people in New York, fiance?
9. How well did the film combine realism with magic, especially in its opening, the Irish setting and otherworldliness, the hero's dream and the coin? The unreal atmosphere with the leprechaun?
10. The humour of transporting a leprechaun to New York e.g. in the traffic?
11. What standards and beliefs did the film expect in its audience as regards human nature, good and evil, sincerity and honesty? How delightful was the film?
