Alicia I love this movie so much

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

moonspinner55 Unemployed Lucille Ball, the worst student at secretarial school, is hired by a phony reality company precisely due to her innocent ignorance--and her nice legs! William Holden is her boss who doesn't mind if she can't type, as long as she provides a good cover for his private bookie joint in the back room. It took four writers to concoct this slapstick un-merriment, which has very few jokes (never mind good ones). It's a treat to see Ball and Holden together in a film, but the movie has been conceived on the most basic comedic level (and even there it fails, what with Lucy suddenly becoming an office firebrand and whipping Holden's non-business into shape). It gives several fine character actors (like Gloria Henry and Charles Lane) fairly decent supporting roles, but nobody gave much thought to the heroine, and Ball can't carry the movie on charm and legs alone. ** from ****

Michael O'Keefe This comedy is well paced and stars Lucille Ball two years before she started on her super-stardom career on TV; and William Holden shortly before making it big on the silver screen. Ellen Grant(Ball)is the absolute worst pupil at a school for secretarial skills. Her dim-witted actions makes her the perfect secretary for Dick Richmond(Holden), who is using a phony real estate business that merely fronts for a bookmaking operation. The ambitious new secretary puts a venture in motion to find cheap housing for local citizens. Richmond gets himself in a crunch and decides to use down payments on non-existent homes to pay off a large gambling debt. Incompetence can be very humorous. The supporting cast features: James Gleason, Frank McHugh, Janis Carter, George Cleveland and Gloria Henry.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

David (Handlinghandel) 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.