RKO filed for bankruptcy in the mid-1930's and was on the verge of finally getting back on their feet financially by 1940. I suspect that someone from their cost accounting group wandered into the studio commissary in 1939 and found it full of under-contract actors and production staff goofing off and eating studio food. They rounded up this group, stuffed the whole bunch onto an unused sound stage (with a leftover southwestern set) and got them singing and dancing to songs from a Rogers and Hart Broadway show (which they had an option on but had deemed unworthy of feature film treatment).
The result was released as "Too Many Girls" (1940), financially practical because with almost everything already paid for (insert fixed cost here), the additional expense of actually producing something boiled down to a little electricity and some black and white film stock.
No good reason to track this one down, it's pretty witless as a comedy-with the miscasting making for funnier moments than anything else in the film. Everyone except Ann Miller is too old to be playing college students and they try to pass Hal Le Roy (one of Hollywood's most effeminate actors) off as a college football All-American. I generally like this kind of stuff and will sit through anything to watch Ann Miller; so if it totally turned me off it is unlikely to appeal to most viewers.
Mostly it is notable for what happened off camera as Lucy and Desi made their first connection.
Some of the musical numbers by Rodgers and Hart were bearable; "Heroes in the Fall" and "Pottawatomie". Trudy Erwin dubs Lucy's only song. Francis Langford does most of the other numbers.
Mildly wild heiress Connie Casey (Lucille Ball) returns from finishing school in Europe with an unusual request to attend her father's alma mater in New Mexico-Pottawatomie College. "You mean a lot to me, Pottawatomie. You hit the spot of me, Pottawatomie. I love Pottawatomie with all my anatomy. So every tot of me, that is begot of me, will go to Pot, Pot, Pottawatomie".
Lucy was almost 30 at the time and even with "extreme" soft focus and minimal close-ups can't remotely pass for 18.
Her father suspects that she has a boyfriend at the school and hires four Ivy League football stars to monitor the behavior of the new freshman. The four eventually end up playing for the school's hapless football team, which in a matter of a few days has changed its schedule to include games with big time programs like Nebraska, Columbia and Tennessee. There is a grand celebration at which the student body sings the following less-than-immortal lyrics: "You're a ham-better scram-Notre Dame, We'll make Williams wail, Army-you too Navy, Boo Hoo to Purdue, Georgia Tech day you'll dread-you're a wreck, Look at Brown turn blue, We'll make a bumpia out of Columbia, In a quota Minnesota's got to go, You'll see U of D, We'll have all the alphabet to shout out." (reviewers note: the U of D is the University of Detroit which was once a football power).
The scale of this thing is ultimately its undoing as Broadway ensembles of 15 are replaced with a cast of hundreds (remember all those people sitting in the RKO commissary drawing paychecks for doing nothing). On risqué Broadway the girls who are still virgins wear beanies; in the film they wear them to signify that they have never been kissed (it is amusing to watch these aging and jaded RKO starlets trying to pass for ultra-chaste teens).
There is a corny and unconvincing romance between Lucy and Richard Carlson; whose brand of wooden acting would eventually work to his advantage in 1950's science fiction films like "It Came From Outer Space".
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
The result was released as "Too Many Girls" (1940), financially practical because with almost everything already paid for (insert fixed cost here), the additional expense of actually producing something boiled down to a little electricity and some black and white film stock.
No good reason to track this one down, it's pretty witless as a comedy-with the miscasting making for funnier moments than anything else in the film. Everyone except Ann Miller is too old to be playing college students and they try to pass Hal Le Roy (one of Hollywood's most effeminate actors) off as a college football All-American. I generally like this kind of stuff and will sit through anything to watch Ann Miller; so if it totally turned me off it is unlikely to appeal to most viewers.
Mostly it is notable for what happened off camera as Lucy and Desi made their first connection.
Some of the musical numbers by Rodgers and Hart were bearable; "Heroes in the Fall" and "Pottawatomie". Trudy Erwin dubs Lucy's only song. Francis Langford does most of the other numbers.
Mildly wild heiress Connie Casey (Lucille Ball) returns from finishing school in Europe with an unusual request to attend her father's alma mater in New Mexico-Pottawatomie College. "You mean a lot to me, Pottawatomie. You hit the spot of me, Pottawatomie. I love Pottawatomie with all my anatomy. So every tot of me, that is begot of me, will go to Pot, Pot, Pottawatomie".
Lucy was almost 30 at the time and even with "extreme" soft focus and minimal close-ups can't remotely pass for 18.
Her father suspects that she has a boyfriend at the school and hires four Ivy League football stars to monitor the behavior of the new freshman. The four eventually end up playing for the school's hapless football team, which in a matter of a few days has changed its schedule to include games with big time programs like Nebraska, Columbia and Tennessee. There is a grand celebration at which the student body sings the following less-than-immortal lyrics: "You're a ham-better scram-Notre Dame, We'll make Williams wail, Army-you too Navy, Boo Hoo to Purdue, Georgia Tech day you'll dread-you're a wreck, Look at Brown turn blue, We'll make a bumpia out of Columbia, In a quota Minnesota's got to go, You'll see U of D, We'll have all the alphabet to shout out." (reviewers note: the U of D is the University of Detroit which was once a football power).
The scale of this thing is ultimately its undoing as Broadway ensembles of 15 are replaced with a cast of hundreds (remember all those people sitting in the RKO commissary drawing paychecks for doing nothing). On risqué Broadway the girls who are still virgins wear beanies; in the film they wear them to signify that they have never been kissed (it is amusing to watch these aging and jaded RKO starlets trying to pass for ultra-chaste teens).
There is a corny and unconvincing romance between Lucy and Richard Carlson; whose brand of wooden acting would eventually work to his advantage in 1950's science fiction films like "It Came From Outer Space".
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.