Shout! Factory released the 1975 screwball(ish) comedy Lucky Lady on DVD
Directed by Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain) and written by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (American Graffiti), Lucky Lady stars Liza Minnelli (Cabaret), Gene Hackman (The French Connection) and Burt Reynolds (Smokey and the Bandit) as a trio of down-on-their-luck losers who come together in a Mexican border town to start a booze-running operation during the Prohibition Era. Though egos, enemies and envy all collide, through some mysterious alchemy and a couple of gunfights, the three become immensely successful bootleggers and, even more surprising to them, a surprisingly functional ménage à trois.
When it was released in theaters, Lucky Lady was a highly anticipated movie starring three of the biggest stars from the 1970s. However, the film was quickly branded one of the decade’s biggest critical and commercial failures. Substantially budgeted and lavishly over-produced, Lucky Lady at least looks great, featuring stunning art direction and production design by Norman Reynolds (Superman) and John Barry (A Clockwork Orange), respectively. And then there’s the always-fun-to-watch ensemble of actors, who were all in their prime for this movie.
The ending of the film is famously not the original end. A new ending was shot after the movie’s production studio, 20th Century Fox, became anxious over the original conclusion, which finds Hackman and Reynolds gunned down on a beach and Minelli ending up alone. In the re-shot ending, the one that can be seen in the film, nobody is killed and all three stars are seen together years later in old-age makeup. Footage of the original murderous climax was included in Fox’s syndicated movie clips show That’s Hollywood back in the 1980s.
The DVD includes a vintage making-of featurette.
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