Desi Arnaz

(On Cable TV, March 2020) In Hollywood history, Too Many Girls usually gets a footnote mention as “the movie where Lucille Ball met Desi Arnaz,” leading to their long and fruitful marriage/partnership. Some commentators often feel compelled to comment in the same breath on the film itself being not good. Well, phooey to that—I’m here to tell you that Too Many Girls is a perfectly entertaining blend of college comedy, implied naughtiness and some football thrown in for good measure—plus the excellent Ann Miller tap-dancing. The premise is something that could have become a splendid 1980s sex comedy: As a millionaire’s daughter (played by a good-but-not-yet-great Lucille Ball) decides to attend a college far in the west, the rich man hires four strapping lads to act as bodyguards unbeknownst to her. Complications ensure when the four young men turn around the winning record of the college’s football team and one of them falls in love with the heiress. While an adaptation of a Broadway Musical, Too Many Girls is curiously forgettable when it comes to the songs and dances. Also not present enough is Ann Miller—while she’s there and performs, she’s clearly in an early-ish supporting role with little opportunity to shine in the spotlight. OK, all right—Too Many Girls is, at best, an average musical of the era for low-budgeted RKO: watchable, even amusing, but not all that memorable. It would be far less fondly remembered (and for that, largely for Ann Miller’s filmography) if Lucy and Desi hadn’t met on set. [April 2022: Being the Ricardos even features a scene meant to recreate the film—complete with what’s supposed to be Ann Miller’s legs!]

(Second viewing, On Cable TV, March 2021) As a silly college comedy (yup, they had those in the early 1940s!), Too Many Girls is perhaps more interesting for its setting than its content, although it does have an unusual spark to its premise. Everything begins as four ace football players are convinced (somehow, by a billionaire) to let go of a bright college career in order to act as bodyguards/chaperones to his rebellious daughter going to study in the American south-west. What makes the film a bit unusual is the location of the college, and its refusal to stick to Ivy-league atmosphere: “Pottawatomie College” in New Mexico is proudly set in a desert, and the Mexican influence is felt throughout: Too Many Girls is colourful despite being in black-and-white, and Ann Miller plays a character meant to be of Hispanic origins (which mostly consists in letting her curls run wild and calling her “Pepe”) – her signing segments are predictably some of the highlights of the film. Many musical set-pieces take the form of vigorously choreographed crowd dancing, which is not a bad thing at all. The cast does have its attraction as well – other than Miller, who really plays a supporting character, there’s Lucille Ball as the supposedly rebellious daughter (she’s mildly energetic at best), the very likable Desi Arnaz as one of the bodyguards (not the one who romances her, but no matter – in real life, they married two months after the film was released!) Perhaps overly slavish to the original Broadway musical, the plotting sort of loses its way midway through and the ending doesn’t quite satisfy. Too Many Girls is a pleasant-enough time, but there are many ways in which it could have been better: Shooting in colour, letting go of Broadway in order to focus on more cinematic qualities and working on the film’s last half would have been obvious starting points. Still, it’s fun enough, the scenery is a change of pace and the parallels with other, more modern campus comedies are intriguing enough.