Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) I happened to go overnight from a 1939 Lucille Ball film to 1949’s Miss Grant Takes Richmond and it wasn’t hard to appreciate what ten years did in defining her persona. Going from cute but largely undistinguishable ingenue to the patented look and behaviour that would ensure her epochal TV success, Ball also used the decade to gather her full face and curly hair that still distinguishes her today. In Miss Grant Takes Richmond, she plays a slightly ditzy young woman who graduates last in her secretarial class and is immediately snapped up by a shady bookmaker who puts up a false real estate front to camouflage his illicit business. After all, who really needs a competent secretary when she’s just supposed to be window-dressing? Alas, his plan doesn’t account for a few wildcards: What our protagonist lacks in secretarial competence she more than makes up in drive, goodness and interpersonal skills: before long, she has transformed our bookmaker in a reluctant but authentic real-estate developer, rallying the community around an affordable housing project—even when hilarious mistakes are made along the way. Then there’s the final flaw: Falling in love with her, even as an old flame threatens to pull him back in the shady life. Ball is in fine form here—there’s a moment where she stares wide-eyed at the camera and we can see the almost fully-formed Lucy of I Love Lucy, going for slapstick with an ease that would be remarkable if it wasn’t designed to look effortless. It helps to have William Holden as a co-lead, able to play a leading man that would be plausibly involved with organized crime. The comedy can get very broad at times—such as the construction site sequences—but Ball is better when she can go full-spectrum on verbal and physical comedy. While Miss Grant Takes Richmond is perhaps too basic to live on as a classic comedy, it’s quite entertaining, fun to watch and an excellent showcase for Ball’s talents just on the cusp of her becoming a superstar.