6/10
Wacky nonsense features high-energy stars
17 October 2017
Lucille Ball stars as Annabel Allison, movie star. Jack Oakie, studio publicity man, has a great idea: He talks Annabel into getting caught stealing—a jail record, he argues, will give a great boost to her current picture, a prison drama. Annabel goes along with the gag, spends 30 days in jail, gets Oakie fired, has a change of heart and gets him his job back...all in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Lucy is wild and blustery in this hectic comedy that keeps the jokes flying at a furious pace. Oakie is fairly obnoxious but eventually likable enough...at least, if you don't mind a pushy big mouth whose heart is mostly in the right place after all.

Familiar supporting actors add their own particular brands of humor: Ruth Donnelly is the wise cracking studio secretary, Fritz Feld is the eccentric European director who wants to make a "serious picture," Bradley Page is the exasperated studio boss.

Lucy ends up working as a maid (prep work for her next movie role, of course) for snooty Elizabeth Risdon, whose screwy inventor brother Thurston Hall brings home some "investors" who turn out to be crooks, and they're all trapped in the house....

It's very nutty and makes no sense at all—but I guess it is an interesting angle on the movie business, and it really is full of good laughs.

My favorite line is Lucy objecting to the maid picture: "You mean that piece of literary junk they've had around the studio for years? Why, they'd have to rewrite that before the moths would eat it."
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