Ella, él y el otro

Harold Lloyd the fabled comedian of the silent screen produced this comedy for RKO. Lloyd recognizing comic talent has Lucille Ball in the lead and her guy and gob in that order are Edmond O'Brien and George Murphy.

The day before she's to start a new job as the secretary of a big shipping firm, Ball and her family which consists of parents George Cleveland and Kathleen Howard and nimble fingered Lloyd Corrigan as her brother decide to go to the opera. They get into a row with Edmond O'Brien and his fiance Marguerite Chapman when they sit at his box at the Met.

The next day Ball reports for work and discovers her new boss is O'Brien and that sets off a row. But soon he rather likes the blue color girl. The problem is she has a blue collar guy in sailor George Murphy on leave from Uncle Sam's Navy and deciding whether he wants another hitch.

The comedy belongs to Ball and Murphy. O'Brien who is a rich but shy business executive serves as a foil primarily. Lloyd puts in a few nice touches including a great car chase that could have come from one of his silent screen classics.

Franklin Pangborn has a couple of scenes as a nervous pet shop owner whom they all seem to run into and put upon. Henry Travers is also featured as O'Brien's uncle and quite the matchmaker.

Curiously enough with one of the protagonists a sailor and the film coming out in March of 1941 not a word about current unpleasantness in the world that the Navy would be getting into before the year was out.

Films like these were putting Lucille Ball on the road to being the queen of comedy.

It's films like this that never guaranteed LUCILLE BALL would become a big star in her early Hollywood comedies. There's nothing subtle here in this film produced by Harold Lloyd and directed by Richard Wallace.

Lucille is the scatterbrained daughter in a family of zanies who meets EDMOND O'BRIEN in a mix-up over theater tickets. He's a casual, laid back executive, not very assertive (unlike his later roles), and when he needs a substitute secretary Lucy shows up for the job. It's a hectic film from then on.

GEORGE MURPHY is her brash sailor boyfriend, LLOYD CORRIGAN her brother, HENRY TRAVERS her father and the befuddled FRANKLIN PANGBORN is a pet shop owner.

It's a more subdued Lucy than usual with the others having most of the heavy mugging and pratfalls to do. MARGUERITE CHAPMAN is wasted as O'Brien's neglected girlfriend. Nice cast but they all have mediocre material to deal with.

Summing up: Passes the time pleasantly enough, but is nothing special.

A couple of years ago one of our video rental stores went out of business. They sold off their stock. I knew that they had a good selection of movies from the 30's and 40's so I invested in about 20 of them. I just realized last week that I had overlooked viewing some of them. One of these was a 1941 flick called "A Girl, A Guy and a Gob" which I watched this evening. It starred Lucille Ball, George Murphy and Edmund O'Brien and was released in 1941.Much to my surprise it was very entertaining. The Producer was none other than Harold Lloyd of silent film fame. Evidently he produced 2 movies for RKO and they were both successful...don't know why the collaboration did not continue. "A Girl, A Guy and A Gob" has touches of silent film comedy and is also reminiscent in places of "You Can't Take It With You" since it deals with a similar "crazy" family. The principal stars look unbelievably young, especially O'Brien who later in his career became rather heavy. In this movie he looked somewhat like Franchot Tone. George Murphy also looks youthful and even does a bit of dancing although this is not a musical. Lucille Ball restrains herself in her comedy bits and mostly leaves the horseplay to Murphy (the Gob) and a fine cast of supporting players. So if you only like Lucy at her most outrageous you might be a little disappointed, but forget your disappointment because this is really a funny movie. The writing is good and the simple story line makes sense and the characters come through as believable. I attribute this to the involvement of Harold Lloyd who was really a comedy genius. I actually laughed out loud several times, something I don't often do for a Hollywood comedy. Try it, you might like it too.

I really wanted to like "A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob". After all, the great silent comedian Harold Lloyd was the producer of this film...and I love Lloyd. But, sadly, I found the film to occasionally be tedious...mostly because it seemed to try too hard to make the audience laugh. Subtle, it wasn't! And, overall, it's more a pleasant (albeit loud) time-passer and not much more.

The film starts off well--with a rich guy, Stephen (Edmond O'Brien) in an awkward situation at the symphony. A family is in his box and try as he might, he cannot convince the staff that they are in his place. Not surprisingly, Stephen is mad.

Later, Dot (Lucille Ball) realizes that her family WAS in the wrong...it was Stephen's box after all. However, shortly after realizing it, she's assigned to be Stephen's new secretary. Imagine how awkward this might be!

Along the way, Stephen finds himself falling for Dot. But there's a hitch...she's got a fiance who is a sailor (George Murphy)...and Stephen likes the couple and doesn't want to horn in on their relationship. But what about Dot....what does she want?!

The problem with this film is that in many scenes it tries way, way too hard to be kooky. In the process, it lack subtlety and is a bit shrill. Terrible? No...but these annoying scenes do negatively impact the film and it's an easy film to skip....or not.

Lucy, Murphy, and O'Brien make something out of this little B movie.