A small comedy with a nicely paced story about a bookie played by William Holden who tries to hide his operation behind the front of a real estate office that he opens in a medium sized town. He hires a secretary played by Lucille Ball who can't even type. To his consternation, she attracts interested first-time home buyers, WW2 vets and their wives and children. It almost has, at times, the feeling of George Bailey in Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, building homes for the emerging middle class. Taking us out to the construction site, Lucy is nearly crushed under tons of earth in a rather incredible scene, while Holden and his associates (who are given many funny lines) are reluctantly led by the positive goodness of the buyers into being pioneers in real estate development and early suburban sprawl.

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.

I've always thought William Holden was an underrated comic actor and at his most charming in some of his comedies (Sabrina, Born Yesterday, Moon is Blue). Since he didn't make a lot of comedies, I was looking forward to this one with Lucille Ball. But it's not Holden's film. It's Lucy's film, with Holden playing the straight man. I'm not a big Lucy fan, but she's quite funny in this. Holden, on the other hand, seems a little stiff or disinterested. To be honest, there's not much to work with. Lucy probably succeeds because she's very good at physical comedy and can make us laugh without saying anything, which helps when the script is so weak. Holden's humor tends to come from his intelligence and his timing, which is harder to make work when the screenplay is mediocre or you don't want to be in the film to begin with. Miss Grant Takes Richmond came out the year before Sunset Blvd., so I imagine that Holden's frustration with his roles during much of the 1940s was reaching its peak around this time. But James Gleason and Frank McHugh, two wonderful actors, also seem to struggle a bit in this film, so I pin much of the blame on the writing. There are some funny bits here and there, but it's all a little sugary for me. Lucy fans will probably enjoy it, though - she does the best.