Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949)

Wonderful character development!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

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.

Some funny antics are shown in this 1949 comedy with Lucille Ball and William Holden.Ball immediately showed her comedic gifts as a dimwitted secretary hired by a bookie (Holden) to watch over the office.Trouble is that she is the niece of a judge. Thinking that Holden is in real estate, she begins to bring prospective customers and builders to him. Frank McHugh and James Gleason co-star and do well as comic foils.Some of the scenes are hilarious where Ball shows her "stupidity" and other happenings. Holden is young, adept at comedy but was chain smoking throughout the film.This movie was a definite pre-test for Lucy Ricardo. Too bad Vivian Vance and Bill Frawley weren't in it as well.

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 (1949) directed by Lloyd Bacon, stars Lucille Ball as Ellen Grant, probably the worst student the Woodruff Secretarial School has ever graduated. William Holden plays Dick Richmond, a bookie who needs a naive person to lend respectability to his illegal gambling operation. Naturally, he chooses Ellen Grant.The movie is totally predictable, and very much a product of the 1940's. To my knowledge, not a single person of color appears in the film. Bookmakers have a code of professional ethics, to which they scrupulously adhere. When a boss kisses a secretary, she's flattered, not offended, and so on. (Some things in our society have really changed for the better in 56 years!)By 1949, it was obvious that Lucille Ball was no longer starlet material, and the director was intelligent enough to recognize her abilities as a comic actor. Many of the scenes in the movie could have come right out of the "I Love Lucy" show, which began two years later. (Incidentally, co-star William Holden appeared in a memorable episode of "I Love Lucy.")As one reviewer has already noted, this film is for Lucy fans only. However, if you *are* a Lucy fan, the video is worth finding and seeing.