Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

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.

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.

This is a not so funny comedy that does at least provide a few laughs, mostly because it's a set-up for some shenanigans that are reminders of what would happen when LUCILLE BALL left films for television to become America's number one comedienne with I LOVE LUCY.There are more than a few hints of her deft handling of physical comedy and there's a nice chemistry between Lucy and her handsome boss, WILLIAM HOLDEN. Then too, there's the additional advantage of having JAMES GLEASON and FRANK McHUGH as supporting actors for a thin story about a daffy secretary who is slow in catching on to the fact that the real estate office she works for is really a front for bookies.MISS GRANT TAKES RICHMOND has all the appearance of a low-budget programmer and it's surprising to find WILLIAM HOLDEN still drifting around in this sort of weak material when he had so many golden opportunities just ahead of him. Still, he's not bad and shows a definite flair for handling light romantic comedy. But there's no doubt about it, this is a vehicle designed to promote the comic flair of his co-star, soon to become famous as a scatterbrained housewife.The thin script plays more like a half-hour TV comedy padded to the running time of a feature film. The funniest bits are the slapstick elements, particularly Lucy avoiding a building crane that seems intent on burying her in a pile of dirt and mud. But the stronger laughs are few and far between when the script is as painfully weak as this one.Strictly for Lucy's most ardent fans.