TOO MANY GIRLS (1940)

A glossy college musical from RKO which, while not up to the standards of the studio's Astaire/Rogers films, and definitely no GOOD NEWS, is still watchable and fun. The movie never quite lives up to its opening minutes, a clever pre-credit shot of a bunch of football players singing a song about hating the spring because they're "Heroes in the Fall." The story proper begins at a little country inn called the Hunted Stag (there's a nice gag about a visitor looking for the Stunted Hag) where a bunch of Princeton football players working part-time during the off-season are recruited by a rich businessman as guardians for his wild daughter (Lucille Ball) who is going to Pottawattamie College in New Mexico. They enroll as students and are supposed to surreptitiously keep an eye on her so she doesn't misbehave (though even by 40's standards, she's hardly a loose cannon, joining up with a sorority whose members wear caps identifying them as girls who don't kiss boys). The father makes the football players sign an "Anti-Romantic Clause" but of course, the rest of the thin plot is all about romantic complications (and football games). Richard Carlson is quite charismatic as the boy who falls for Ball; Desi Arnaz pairs up with Ann Miller (playing a Latina) and they do some nice dancing; Eddie Bracken moons over Francis Langford. Tall vaudeville dancer Hal LeRoy is the fourth player and gets to do a nice tap number. The cast also includes Douglas Walton as an older Noel Coward-type writer who has a rather improbable flirtation with Ball, and Grady Sutton and Van Johnson (in his film debut) have small roles. The most memorable song from the Rodgers and Hart score is "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," sung first by Ball (dubbed by someone else) and Carlson, and later in a burlesque fashion by Bracken to Arnaz. The plot and setting are reminiscent of the Gershwin musical GIRL CRAZY, a play from the 20's which was made into a movie in the 30's (with Wheeler and Woolsey--reviewed here 11/4/04) and in the 40's (with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland); the music here can't hope to match that of the other show, but this is overall more fun. [TCM]