Lucille Ball is a clumsy student who barely graduates from secretary school. William Holden and his two buddies, Gleason and McHugh, run a bookie joint and hire Ball as a front for the "Richmond Realty" office. Ball thinks it's a genuine realty firm and disarticulates Holden's arrangement by committing the office to a low-rent real estate project for returned veterans and their families.
There are lots of opportunities for chuckles in this set up, involving conversational exchanges, situational absurdities, and slapstick. And if William Holden is no expert comedian, Lucille Ball ought to make up for it, and almost does. Gleason and McHugh, of course, are veterans of this sort of shtick.
It doesn't work. The writers must have been in a melancholy mood. The funniest scene is at the beginning, when "I Love Lucy" is trying to take dictation and type a letter and the ribbon pops out and rolls across the floor and her fingers are all blotched with ink and smears appear on her face -- and when not looking horrified she's intermittently trying to smile reassuringly at the instructor who is goggling at her from his desk. It's downhill from there.
I watched this years ago and didn't find it successful. So I watched it again tonight, wondering if the years had improved my ludic faculties. Nope.
There are lots of opportunities for chuckles in this set up, involving conversational exchanges, situational absurdities, and slapstick. And if William Holden is no expert comedian, Lucille Ball ought to make up for it, and almost does. Gleason and McHugh, of course, are veterans of this sort of shtick.
It doesn't work. The writers must have been in a melancholy mood. The funniest scene is at the beginning, when "I Love Lucy" is trying to take dictation and type a letter and the ribbon pops out and rolls across the floor and her fingers are all blotched with ink and smears appear on her face -- and when not looking horrified she's intermittently trying to smile reassuringly at the instructor who is goggling at her from his desk. It's downhill from there.
I watched this years ago and didn't find it successful. So I watched it again tonight, wondering if the years had improved my ludic faculties. Nope.