The Luck of Ginger Coffey 1964

The Luck of Ginger Coffey follows Robert Shaw as Ginger Coffey, a 39-year-old Irishman whose reddish hair and moustache earn him the nickname that shadows his restless quest for fulfillment. After his release from the Army, he moves to Montreal with his wife Vera Coffey, Mary Ure, and their 14-year-old daughter Paulie, hoping for a fresh start in a new country.

In Canada, Ginger struggles to land steady work, and Vera grows frustrated when she discovers he remains unemployed and has spent their ticket money home. Yet they do have one lifeline: their friend Joe McGlade, Tom Harvey, who helps Ginger secure a job as a proofreader at the newspaper where McGlade works as a sports reporter. Ginger, ever hopeful yet skeptical, tells Vera that things will improve, but Vera has her own plan in motion. She leaves Ginger for Joe McGlade and takes Paulie with her, along with most of Ginger’s money and belongings.

Left to fend for himself, Ginger moves into a small YMCA room and accepts a job as a diaper-delivery driver, a role he finds deeply unglamorous but tolerable in a bid to prove his worth. He becomes consumed by the dream of a promotion to reporter that would win Vera back, yet Vera’s focus shifts toward divorce rather than reconciliation. Ginger declines a promising promotion at the diaper service, only to learn that the supposed reporter position never existed at all; it was a vague promise meant to keep him on the payroll short-handed.

Enraged, Ginger clashes with the editor and is escorted from the building. A drunken escapade later—urinating in an alley beside a hotel—results in his arrest for indecent exposure, the charges eventually dropped by a sympathetic judge, in a brief, humiliating trial witnessed by Vera. The two later meet outside the courthouse, where Vera is preparing to depart on a skiing trip with Joe McGlade. In a moment of empathy, Vera invites Ginger for coffee, and he opens up about his failings, seeing his life in a new, if tentative, light. Vera grows cautiously optimistic that his diaper-service promotion might still be available. She steps into her flat, leaves the door ajar as a quiet invitation, and Ginger walks in as the closing credits roll.