My Lucky Star
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Roy Del Ruth
Sonja Henie
Richard Greene
Joan Davis
Cesar Romero
Buddy Ebsen
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
When George Cabot, Sr., owner of Cabots Fifth Avenue department store, learns that his son, George, Jr., has eloped with cabaret performer Marcelle La Verne, and that Marcelle's lawyer wants a cash settlement to end the marriage, he threatens to have bodyguards take his son to his Oklahoma ranch. George escapes down the department store's fire escape and sees through a window Kristina Nielson, an employee, ice-skating on the store's rink. After George slips on the ice, Kristina helps him to his apartment, where Marcelle sees them and endeavors to get Kristina's name as a co-respondent. A fortune-teller then suggests that George get Kristina to leave New York, and he convinces his father and the board of directors to send Kristina to Plymouth University as a student with a multitude of winter outfits to encourage the girls to shop at Cabots. Kristina agrees, but at the college, she makes an enemy of Dorothy, one of her roommates, because of the interest Kristina shows in Larry Taylor, Dorothy's beau. Dorothy then borrows Kristina's clothes and has the boys wear them during a tryout for the winter ice carnival, during which they sing an insulting song about Kristina. After Larry convinces Kristina not to leave, she ice-skates and wins the students' respect and affection. Her talent is the subject of a Life magazine cover story, which Marcelle sees. After Marcelle names Kristina in the divorce suit, the college dean suspends her. Larry and Kristina find Marcelle in New York, and sympathizing with Kristina, whom she is convinced is innocent, Marcelle says that if George will pay her $50,000 in cash, she will tell the newspapers that Kristina is innocent. George cannot pay, but when Larry suggests that he combine the ice carnival with a fashion show at the department store, George, whose father is in Havana, arranges it. The carnival is a great success, Cabot, Sr. returns and gives his son a bonus to pay Marcelle, and Kristina returns with Larry to P.U.
Director
Roy Del Ruth
Cast
Sonja Henie
Richard Greene
Joan Davis
Cesar Romero
Buddy Ebsen
Arthur Treacher
George Barbier
Louise Hovick
Billy Gilbert
Patricia Wilder
Paul Hurst
Elisha Cook Jr.
Robert Kellard
Brewster Twins
Kay Griffith
Charles Tannen
Paul Stanton
Ed Le Saint
Frederick Burton
Frank Jaquet
Sumner Getchell
John Dilson
Cully Richards
Matt Mchugh
Dora Clemant
June Gale
Arthur Rankin
Harold Goodwin
Fred Kelsey
Eddy Conrad
Arthur Jarrett Jr.
Bert Clark
Jack Heasley
Bob Heasley
Crew
Harry Joe Brown
Don Ettlinger
Mack Gordon
Eugene Grossman
Roger Heman
Bernard Herzbrun
Mark-lee Kirk
Thomas Little
Harry Losee
Booth Mccracken
Allen Mcneil
John Mescall
Harry Revel
Royer
Louis Silvers
Harry Tugend
Karl Tunberg
Jack Yellen
Darryl F. Zanuck
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working title of this film was They Met in College. This was Norwegian ice-skating Olympic champion Sonja Henie's fourth film. In 1938, she was ranked third biggest money-making star in an Motion Picture Herald poll of exhibitors. The film was 90 minutes at its preview in Westwood on August 26, 1938. Variety noted that the closing "Alice in Wonderland" number was "done in sepia and very effective." The name of the character played by Joan Davis was "Mary Dwight" in the film, but "Mary Boop" in trade advertising billing sheets and reviews. Davis suffered a sprain of her back muscles while trying to lift Buddy Ebsen during a rehearsal and was hospitalized for three weeks, according to publicity for the film. To follow Sonja Henie as she skated in the rink, an apparatus was built containing a camera platform with metal sled runners attached to a metal stake driven into the center of the rink, which measured 100 by 145 feet, and had been used in all of Henie's films. During the production, the brace supporting the platform, which held two cameras, crews, three large lights and electricians, snapped, and Henie barely escaped being hit by skating out of the way, according to publicity. Louise Hovick was also known as the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item in January 1938, Don Ameche was expected to be in this film. The Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection at the UCLA Theater Arts Library contains in the file for this film a treatment by Sam Hellman from a play by Sheridan Gibney and Victor Wittgenstein, but this does not seem to have been used for this film. The film's end credit contains the statement, "This is one of the movie quiz $250,000 contest pictures." No information has been located concerning this contest.
