Marinai allegri

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.

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).

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

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?

I wanted to see this film because my grandfather acted in it. His name is James Spencer. His south sea island scenes were cut out in the final release of this film. I still found this film to be a great treat and a lot of fun. It was a great example of the screw-ball comedies of the time before WW2. This should be seen on cable tv. Great chemistry between all the actors here.