Such a frustrating disappointment

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

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 ****

Lucille Ball made this film couple years before starring in "I Love Lucy" and in many ways she plays a character with a lot in common with her Lucy Ricardo--clumsy, ditsy and yet quite eager."Miss Grant Takes Richmond" begins with Lucy in a secretarial school. She is utterly hopeless and stands almost no chance of graduating. However, oddly, a guy (William Holden) comes to the school looking for a secretary and picks, of all people, Lucy. You find out later that he's actually running a bookmaking business and wants a really stupid person to pose as a secretary--and just sit there and ask no questions. However, he doesn't anticipate that while Lucy's character isn't very bright, she is full of enthusiasm and drive. So, instead of just sitting around doing nothing, she decides to 'help' Holden with his business (he's posing as a real estate broker). Without his knowledge, she begins making business deals and suddenly Holden and his friends find out they actually have an honest to goodness land development--and new owners! What are they to do? They can't just fire her and abandon the deal, as she has a very well-connected family--including a local judge! What are they to do? Aside from one rather bad slapstick scene where Holden things Lucy was buried alive, the film actually is pretty clever and fun. While the film isn't all that deep, it is enjoyable and a nice vehicle for Lcuy.

When Lucille Ball did I Love Lucy few at the time suspected she had the comic talents she possessed. Her history up to then in films was usually as a wisecracking second banana in major films and some leading roles in B films. And Miss Grant Takes Richmond is definitely a B film. Next year William Holden with Sunset Boulevard would step into the A list of players, but it wasn't his time yet. Holden proved to be a worthy foil for Lucy's comic antics.The film is definitely Lucy's however. CBS executives must have seen Miss Grant Takes Richmond and seen what Lucy could do before passing on I Love Lucy as a television series.There were some incidents that definitely could have come out of I Love Lucy. Her struggles with mastering the typewriter in secretarial school with Holden deftly catching a flying typewriter carriage, her dodging a steam shovel at a construction sight, her trying to use a jackhammer and the aftermath of that, all these could easily have been in any of her television series. Harbinger of things to come. Remember also that Bill Holden made a memorable appearance on I Love Lucy and got a pie in his face at the Brown Derby.Lucy is a klutzy scatterbrained student at a secretarial school run by Charles Lane and Holden comes in looking to hire. To everyone's amazement he hires Lucy. He runs a scam real estate operation that is a front for a bookie joint. Her job is to basically babysit and commiserate with those who actually come in and are looking to buy property and shine them on. She doesn't know she's working for bookies, Bill Holden, Frank McHugh, and James Gleason.Through her own wide-eyed Marie Wilson type view of the world before long she's got this trio actually building homes and trying to be bookies at the same time.To see the Lucy Ricardo of the future by all means catch Miss Grant Takes Richmond.If you don't, you'll have a lot of 'splaining to do.

Miss Grant Takes Richmond is an OK comedy starring Lucille Ball as a somewhat dizzy secretary who is hired by Mr. Richmond, a bookie using a phony real estate business as a front. Lucy, of course, doesn't know this, and she believes that he will build low-cost homes for her friends. This film is, unfortunately, not very funny. There are a couple of humorous sequences, but overall it should have been funnier. There's also very little slapstick, which is strange considering that Lucy was so adept at it. She and Holden do have some chemistry, though, and the supporting cast is good. A 5 out of 10.