A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob

One night, while he was at the opera, young ship tycoon Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien) accidentally meets an unusually full young woman named Dot (Lucille Ball). The next day, while he is still dizzy from their dizzying meeting, she enters his office to serve as his secretary. Despite her audacity - or because of it - Stephen is inevitably attracted to the lively Dot, which is a big problem for Dotina's beauty, a sailor beast named Coffee Cup (George Murphy).

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.

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.

If you're a Lucille Ball fan, you would definitely want to see this movie. As a Lucille Ball fan, I have seen many of her movies, but this one would probably stand as one of the tops. In this movie, Lucille Ball plays as an average girl rather than a self-absorbed lady like in her other films. This movie also features her more than her other works, being seen in most of the scenes. I thought that the movie was great throughout except for the ending. The ending could have been better. Overall, it's a good movie to watch, especially with Lucile Ball in it.

Lucille Ball was much more restrained in this 1941 comedy with Edmond O'Brien and George Murphy.

O'Brien appears so young and dashing in this film. He plays an upper class businessman who meets and finds love with secretary Ball. Murphy plays her sailor boyfriend. To me, the biggest question in the film was who would Murphy wind up with?

The comedy here is tedious. O'Brien has a snobbish girlfriend with a high society mother to the bargain.

Ball comes from a real common family where the brother finds opera tickets that belong to O'Brien. By the next scene, Ball is going to apply for a job where O'Brien is the owner. How coincidental can we get?