Thank Your Lucky Stars Reviews

During WWII, Hollywood attempted to get behind the war effort in a big way, with every major studio--beginning with Paramount and STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM in 1942--producing a showcase musical featuring their star contract players. THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS was the Warner Bros. effort and gave audiences the opportunity to see the studio's biggest names performing in song-and-dance numbers. The flimsy story involves S.Z. Sakall and Edward Everett Horton as producers who are trying to stage a Cavalcade of Stars. They hope to line up some talent from among the guests on Eddie Cantor's radio show, like Dinah Shore (playing herself in her film debut), without involving Cantor himself, but have no such luck, as he becomes a major headache. Meanwhile, aspiring singer Tommy Randolph (Dennis Morgan), struggling songwriter Pat Dixon (Joan Leslie), and Joe Sampson (Cantor), an actor who is unable to find work because he looks too much like Cantor, come up with a kidnap scheme that provides both Tommy and Joe with their big breaks. What the movie lacks in substance it makes up for in energy. Cantor is often quite amusing, but Leslie again proves less than ideal leading lady material. The real heart and soul of this film, though, are the musical numbers featuring such unlikely stars as Errol Flynn (performing "What You Jolly Well Get" as a Cockney sailor in a London pub), John Garfield (doing a tough-guy parody to "Blues in the Night") and Bette Davis (who contributes a fabulous rendition of "They're Either Too Young or Too Old"), among many others.