Miss Grant Takes Richmond

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.

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.

Who in his right mind would give a secretarial job to Ellen Grant, a woman who doesn't seem to have mastered either typing or shorthand? Leave it to Dick Richmond, a man that wants to use Ellen as a distraction to be his receptionist at his real estate agency that serves as a front for his illegal betting activities that is his real business. Poor Mr. Richmond, he gets more than what he bargained for.

Ellen, who starts as an eager secretary, suddenly decides to help the firm in sponsoring the construction of badly needed housing in the area. This is happening at the 'baby boom' era in America, where the returning sailors and their families couldn't find affordable housing. Ellen, who has a heart of gold, wants to involve Richmond into being the builder. Little does she know she is getting in his way.

Lloyd Bacon directed this mildly funny comedy that showed Lucille Ball's talent as a comedienne, something she would exploit in later years as one of America's best loved funny woman in that new medium of television. William Holden shows he was an excellent comedy actor with the way he portrayed the con man Richmond. Two of the best character actors of the thirties and forties, James Gleason and Frank McHugh are seen as the men working the racket in the Richmond's real estate firm.

Although Lucille Ball was nearing forty at the time she appeared in this film, one tends to forget her contribution to the movies that came before this comedy and before finding fame in that new technology, television.

Miss Grant Takes Richmond is an OK comedy starring Lucille Ball as a somewhat dizzy secretary who is hired by Mr. Richmond, a bookie using a phony real estate business as a front. Lucy, of course, doesn't know this, and she believes that he will build low-cost homes for her friends. This film is, unfortunately, not very funny. There are a couple of humorous sequences, but overall it should have been funnier. There's also very little slapstick, which is strange considering that Lucy was so adept at it. She and Holden do have some chemistry, though, and the supporting cast is good. A 5 out of 10.

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.