''Lucky Losers'' is a 1950
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
starring
The Bowery Boys
The Bowery Boys are fictional New York City characters, portrayed by a company of New York actors, who were the subject of 48 feature films released by Monogram Pictures and its successor Allied Artists Pictures Corporation from 1946 through 1 ...
. The film was released on May 14, 1950 by
Monogram Pictures and is the eighteenth film in the series. It had the
working title
A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...
of ''High Stakes''.
Plot
Slip and Sach's boss, David J. Thurston, has allegedly committed suicide. Slip finds a book of matches with the name of a local nightclub on his boss' desk and finds out from Gabe that a casino is being run out of it. Slip comes to the conclusion that the club had something to do with his boss' death and sets out to find his murderer.
The boys get jobs at the club and Louie poses as a rich cattleman as they gather the information to convict the murderers.
Cast
The Bowery Boys
*
Leo Gorcey
Leo Bernard Gorcey (June 3, 1917– June 2, 1969) was an American stage and film actor, famous for portraying the leader of a group of hooligans known variously as the Dead End Kids, the East Side Kids and, as adults, The Bowery Boys. Gorcey was ...
as Terrance Aloysius 'Slip' Mahoney
*
Huntz Hall
Henry Richard "Huntz" Hall (August 15, 1920 – January 30, 1999) was an American radio, stage, and movie performer who appeared in the popular " Dead End Kids" movies, including ''Angels with Dirty Faces'' (1938), and in the later " Bowery ...
as Horace Debussy 'Sach' Jones
*
William Benedict
William Benedict (April 16, 1917 – November 25, 1999), was an American actor, perhaps best known for playing "Whitey" in Monogram Pictures' The Bowery Boys series.
Early years
Benedict was born in Haskell, Oklahoma, After his father's dea ...
as Whitey
*
David Gorcey
David Gorcey (February 6, 1921 – October 23, 1984) was an American actor and the younger brother of actor Leo Gorcey. Gorcey is best known for portraying "Chuck Anderson" in Monogram Pictures' film series The Bowery Boys, and "Pee Wee" in i ...
as Chuck
*
Buddy Gorman
Charles J. "Buddy" Gorman''Hollywood's Made-To-Order-Punks: The Complete Film History of the Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids, and Bowery Boys,'' Richard Roat, BearManor Media, 2010. (September 2, 1921 – April 1, 2010) was an A ...
as Butch
Remaining cast
*
Gabriel Dell
Gabriel Dell (born Gabriel Marcel Dell Vecchio; October 8, 1919 – July 3, 1988) was an American actor and one of the members of what came to be known as the Dead End Kids, then later the East Side Kids and finally The Bowery Boys.
Acting car ...
as Gabe Moreno
*
Bernard Gorcey
Bernard Gorcey (9 January 1886 – 11 September 1955) was a Russian-born American actor. He began in Vaudeville, performed on Broadway, and appeared in multiple shorts and films. He portrayed ice cream shop proprietor Louie Dumbrowski i ...
as Louie Dumbrowski
*
Hillary Brooke
Hillary Brooke (born Beatrice Sofia Mathilda Peterson; September 8, 1914 – May 25, 1999) was an American film actress.
Career
A 5′6″ blonde from the Astoria neighborhood of New York City's borough of Queens, Brooke, who was of Swedish an ...
as Countess
*
Lyle Talbot
Lyle Florenz Talbot (born Lisle Henderson, also credited Lysle Talbot; February 8, 1902 – March 2, 1996) was an American stage, screen and television actor. His career in films spanned three decades, from 1931 to 1960, and he performed on ...
as Bruce McDermott
*
Harry Cheshire
Harry V. Cheshire (August 16, 1891 – June 16, 1968), originally from Emporia, Kansas, was an American character actor who appeared in over 100 films, mostly playing small roles. He was also a stage actor and performed on a St. Louis radio ...
as Chick
*
Joe Turkel
Joseph Turkel (July 15, 1927 – June 27, 2022) was an American character actor who starred in film and television during the Golden Age Era in the 1950s and 1960s. He is known for his roles in Stanley Kubrick's films '' The Killing'', ''Paths ...
as Johnny Angelo
Notes
Producer
Jan Grippo was a professional magician brought to Hollywood to teach
Veronica Lake
Constance Frances Marie Ockelman (November 14, 1922 – July 7, 1973), known professionally as Veronica Lake, was an American film, stage, and television actress. Lake was best known for her femme fatale roles in film noirs with Alan Ladd ...
to be convincing doing card tricks in ''
This Gun for Hire
''This Gun for Hire'' is a 1942 American film noir crime film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Veronica Lake, Robert Preston (actor), Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Alan Ladd. It is based on the 1936 novel ''A Gun for Sale'' by Graham Gr ...
''. He later became Leo Gorcey's agent and produced the Bowery Boys series. He performed the card and dice tricks seen in the film.
Home media
Warner Archives released the film on made-to-order
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
in the United States as part of ''"The Bowery Boys, Volume One"'' on November 23, 2012.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lucky Losers
1950 films
Bowery Boys films
American black-and-white films
1950s English-language films
1950 comedy films
Monogram Pictures films
Films directed by William Beaudine
American comedy films
1950s American films