Miss Grant Takes Richmond

I watched because I am a William Holden fan. Others will watch b/c they are Lucille Ball fans.

They work well together in this harmless comedy. The concept was probably scratched on a diner napkin. Bookie with a fake real estate company hires dimwit secretary. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Throw in veteran support. Include a couple of double entendres along the way. Let Lucy do some physical comedy. And let Bill Holden be his super cool self. And away you go.

Ellen Grant (Lucille Ball) is the worst typist in class. Everyone is surprised when Dick Richmond (William Holden) hires her for his new secretary. He's actually a bookie running a horse race gambling operation out back and a fake property rental business front. He needs a dumb blonde as the face of his fake business but she starts making the fake operation real.

Lucy is showing off some of her physical humor which would come in handy later on her TV show. She does need to be much dumber. The comedy would work better if she's a complete moron. Ellen should be absolutely a young innocent. One can absolutely see the TV Lucy especially when she turns fake thug. The plot is a bit convoluted but a screwball comedy can do that. This is a great progression into one of the great TV shows of all times.

This is a not so funny comedy that does at least provide a few laughs, mostly because it's a set-up for some shenanigans that are reminders of what would happen when LUCILLE BALL left films for television to become America's number one comedienne with I LOVE LUCY.

There are more than a few hints of her deft handling of physical comedy and there's a nice chemistry between Lucy and her handsome boss, WILLIAM HOLDEN. Then too, there's the additional advantage of having JAMES GLEASON and FRANK McHUGH as supporting actors for a thin story about a daffy secretary who is slow in catching on to the fact that the real estate office she works for is really a front for bookies.

MISS GRANT TAKES RICHMOND has all the appearance of a low-budget programmer and it's surprising to find WILLIAM HOLDEN still drifting around in this sort of weak material when he had so many golden opportunities just ahead of him. Still, he's not bad and shows a definite flair for handling light romantic comedy. But there's no doubt about it, this is a vehicle designed to promote the comic flair of his co-star, soon to become famous as a scatterbrained housewife.

The thin script plays more like a half-hour TV comedy padded to the running time of a feature film. The funniest bits are the slapstick elements, particularly Lucy avoiding a building crane that seems intent on burying her in a pile of dirt and mud. But the stronger laughs are few and far between when the script is as painfully weak as this one.

Strictly for Lucy's most ardent fans.

This is the only big-screen movie I have seen in which the Lucille Ball of "I Love Lucy" was clearly apparent. The movie was released only a few years before the TV series started. The TV series: Of course I love it. The movie: It's nicely done but warmed-over from numerous earlier films.

Ball is hired by bookie William Holden from a secretarial school. What's odd about that? Only this: She is far and away, and very obviously, the worst student there. She makes a mess of typing, gets tangled in the typewriter ribbon, etc., Just like Lucy. A little like Charlie Chaplin.

And she uses that high, bleating voice we came to know and love in her television show. She'd made comedies before this but she was always kind of tough, the way she came across in most of her more serious outings too.

This has a fine supporting cast. Seeing James Gleason is always a pleasure. Ditto Frank McHugh, looking a little prosperous here but playing his usual sort of role. And Janis Carter is hilariously mean as Holden's onetime romantic interest.

Holden holds up his part of the movie but seems distracted. He was fine in "Golden Boy" but didn't come into his own until "Sunset Boulevard," also a few years later.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with "Miss Grant Takes Richmond." Maybe it's good, too, that if one dozes off for a bit, one will be right there and know exactly what's going on. It's familiar stuff, nicely handled.

When Lucille Ball did I Love Lucy few at the time suspected she had the comic talents she possessed. Her history up to then in films was usually as a wisecracking second banana in major films and some leading roles in B films.

And Miss Grant Takes Richmond is definitely a B film. Next year William Holden with Sunset Boulevard would step into the A list of players, but it wasn't his time yet. Holden proved to be a worthy foil for Lucy's comic antics.

The film is definitely Lucy's however. CBS executives must have seen Miss Grant Takes Richmond and seen what Lucy could do before passing on I Love Lucy as a television series.

There were some incidents that definitely could have come out of I Love Lucy. Her struggles with mastering the typewriter in secretarial school with Holden deftly catching a flying typewriter carriage, her dodging a steam shovel at a construction sight, her trying to use a jackhammer and the aftermath of that, all these could easily have been in any of her television series. Harbinger of things to come. Remember also that Bill Holden made a memorable appearance on I Love Lucy and got a pie in his face at the Brown Derby.

Lucy is a klutzy scatterbrained student at a secretarial school run by Charles Lane and Holden comes in looking to hire. To everyone's amazement he hires Lucy. He runs a scam real estate operation that is a front for a bookie joint. Her job is to basically babysit and commiserate with those who actually come in and are looking to buy property and shine them on. She doesn't know she's working for bookies, Bill Holden, Frank McHugh, and James Gleason.

Through her own wide-eyed Marie Wilson type view of the world before long she's got this trio actually building homes and trying to be bookies at the same time.

To see the Lucy Ricardo of the future by all means catch Miss Grant Takes Richmond.

If you don't, you'll have a lot of 'splaining to do.