Mr. Lucky (1943)

Directed by H. C. Potter. Starring Cary Grant, Laraine Day, Charles Bickford, Paul Stewart, Alan Carney, Gladys Cooper, Kay Johnson, Henry Stephenson, Walter Kingsford, Florence Bates, Vladimir Sokoloff.

Grant plays a draft-dodging grifter who puts one over a war relief syndicate to finance his dream of running a gambling ship, but (of course) there’s a pretty girl in the ranks of the intended victims, and (of course) they fall for each other. No great shakes as a crime picture or a romance, but the actors make it absorbing enough overall, and the narrative has a satisfactory volume of complications. Grant’s charm shines through—he gets to knit and trot out a little rhyming slang reminiscent of his Cockney background—but even he can’t sell the hokey scene where he reappraises his priorities because of the sobering contents of a letter translated by a Greek priest (played by an uncredited Sokoloff). Bookend sequences on a pier don’t work as intended, but the foggy atmosphere is admirable. Co-scribe Milton Holmes penned the magazine story source (“Bundles for Freedom”).

65/100