Luck is the Moral

If there's one thing leprechauns hate, it's unethical journalism. So Horace the leprechaun takes it as his duty to teach an American named Fitzgerald a lesson in 1948's The Luck of the Irish, a cheery parade of Irish stereotypes, it has some charm in its screenplay but is for the most part rote and lifeless.

Tyrone Power plays Fitzgerald, an American journalist getting ready to sell his soul to a big time paper after making hardly any money for some reason reporting in Europe on the second World War. He and his former boss, Bill (James Todd), stop in Ireland first, though it sure looks an awful lot like California.

That is, when it doesn't look like a sound stage. Bill is on hand mainly to make broad remarks about the Irish. When Fitzgerald wonders if the road leads anywhere, Bill remarks the roads are whimsical like the Irish people. When Nora is upset Fitzgerald is leaving, Bill tells her not to waste her Irish temper on him.

That's American actress Anne Baxter as Nora, managing a passable accent.

South African actor Cecil Kellaway plays the leprechaun, Horace, who becomes Fitzgerald's devoted servant after Fitzgerald wrestles him to the ground and doesn't take Horace's pot of gold. Oh, the unintended subtext.

Most of the movie takes place in New York where Horace decides he must stop Fitzgerald writing for the campaign of a politician Fitzgerald truly hates and marrying that politician's daughter he doesn't love. Part of Horace's technique is to remind Fitzgerald of the good simple Irish folk and so Nora comes to town and the two go together to an Irish pub where of course a brawl ensues and Fitzgerald fights a fireman.

If only someone had handed them swords.

The movie's just about everything you might expect. I did kind of enjoy Kellaway's performance and found myself really wanting him to manipulate Fitzgerald.

Twitter Sonnet #806

Containment failed of Quetzalcoatl reprise.
An orange precipitation boiled chalk.
As fathomless the moat yet holds surprise.
The plumed and mounted shadow starts its walk.
The javelins like corn arrayed to thresh
Could come from God or by Tlaxcala men.
Above the lake of flame an iron mesh,
Leviathan's shade overwhelmed a Sin.
Tomato particles ennoble seeds.
With lips like teeth the Earth received the dead.
A skirt of snakes resorts to skyless beads.
A sugar skull was seen to roll in bed.
A phantom waterfall turns gold to peat.
Cast iron cups contain their sleepless heat.