Son patron et son matelot

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).

The Duncans are sitting in the box seat at the opera. Pigeon found the tickets after shipping magnate Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien) dropped them. Stephen is angry that someone else has taken his box and he makes a scene. Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball) discovers that her brother had lost the money in a horse race and runs out on the show. She drops her purse on Stephen's head and the next day, she finds that her new job is being Stephen's new secretary. Her boyfriend Claudius J. "Coffee Cup" Cup (George Murphy) returns from the Navy.

This starts with a great Meet Cute. Lucille Ball is doing a lot of funny stuff. It's a great rom-com start for Stephen and Dot. Then Coffee Cup comes in and it turns into something else. For it to be a better love triangle, Coffee Cup needs to be a lesser suitor and Dot can't be fully in love. I certainly don't want Stephen ending up with Cecilia but I don't want Dot to leave Coffee Cup either. Coffee Cup is too good. I really like a lot of funny bits and the three main characters especially Dot with Coffee Cup. The four inches is a weirdly fun unforgettable bit. They just need to recalibrate Coffee Cup to fit the rom-com formula. I also didn't know what a gob is.

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.

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?

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