Too Many Girls may have been the best thing to happen to Lucille Ball and Van Johnson. Ball looked at this RKO train wreck and undoubtedly thought, "I could do better." Van Johnson thought, "Gee, am I lucky I only had one line!"
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (for those born yesterday) went on to found Desilu, which produced "I Love Lucy," as well as the Andy Griffith Show, the Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, Mission Impossible, etc., etc. In the ultimate irony, Desilu bought the RKO Pictures movie production properties and facilities, including the famous back lot Forty Acres. They reused the lot for this movie to make Star Trek episodes. And it all started with Too Many Girls.
But in Too Many Girls there is nothing to see: The music is lousy, the dancing jerky and exaggerated, the jokes so lame as to be virtually nonexistent, the acting a hodgepodge of monotone and exaggeration, the plot toilet paper thin.
Don't believe a musical can be offensively painful? What can you say when "Spic and Spanish" (a dual reference to a floor cleaning product and an offensive term for Hispanic) is the most entertaining song? (ANYTHING is better than "Potawatomine.") There is one enduring classic, "I Didn't Know What Time it Was," which was mutilated by Richard Carlson, and promptly lacerated by Eddie Bracken with his corny repetition.
The foundation of the "plot" is that four star football players are hired as body guards (abadoning college at Princeton, Yale and Harvard) to report back to Dad on Lucille's love life. So she is dating an older man (Beverly Waverly) literally under the noses of the body guards, yet there is no report back, no consequences, no development and no explanation of what their relationship is, aside from the fact that he is the real reason she chose to attend Potawatomie. Can those college boys spell "incompetence"?
The rest of the story consists of following Ball around, snippets of guys chasing a football, guys chasing girls, and enormous, pointless dance numbers. Hey, anyone find a joke laying around? Oh, right, "Texas Gentile." I think the funniest line was how Potawatomie only beat Columbia by 4 points (Rodgers and Hart were Columbia alumni). Was that before or after the boys joined?
I was curious to see Ann Miller and Frances Langford. Langford's acting was forgettably dull, while Miller's was way, way, way over the top in corny artificialness (toward the end someone apparently told Miller she was supposed to be Hispanic, so she adopts a Mexican accent). Ball's acting was adequate for a B movie (this ain't Gone With The Wind); in hindsight, she might have saved the movie with a comedic performance. Desi was the only guy in the movie with any charisma (aside from Van Johnson, who glowed in the dark even as an extra). Harry Shannon, the Dad, turned in a performance so wooden they should have sent for a doctor to check his pulse.
Why did RKO make this movie? It wasn't totally unfamiliar with musicals, having made the iconic Top Hat. But RKO wasn't MGM, whose assembly line wizards could turn a telephone book into a musical extravaganza. Someone had departed with the recipe for the secret sauce.
This movie had no shortage of talent, it just didn't tap it. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's long and prolific collaboration was nearing an end, with Hart's death in 1943. Rodgers would team up with Oscar Hammerstein II and produce Oklahoma! in 1943, and write State Fair for the screen in 1945. And you may have heard of their Sound of Music.
George Abbott would go on to direct two musicals, Damn Yankees and Pajama Game, that are enjoyable. Either he didn't know what he was doing in 1940 or RKO didn't give him the time and resources. The most remarkable thing about Too Many Girls is that it didn't kill his career. I guess a director doesn't have to go down with the ship.
Poster: aimless-46 seems to have hit the nail on the head in his earlier review: RKO had a bunch of actors and staff on salary with nothing to do, plus an option on the Broadway play. Apparently they figured they had nothing to lose, provided they didn't spend too much money. Time to knock out a B musical! What have we got to lose?
But if this movie had been a financial and artistic success, RKO might not have sold out to Desilu, Lucille Ball might have continued as a serious actress and not become "Lucy," and Desi might have had a career as a dashing leading man.
Instead, "Too Many Girls" became perhaps the most influential bomb in movie history.
As Zero Mostel says during a toast in "The Producers": "Here's to failure!"
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (for those born yesterday) went on to found Desilu, which produced "I Love Lucy," as well as the Andy Griffith Show, the Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, Mission Impossible, etc., etc. In the ultimate irony, Desilu bought the RKO Pictures movie production properties and facilities, including the famous back lot Forty Acres. They reused the lot for this movie to make Star Trek episodes. And it all started with Too Many Girls.
But in Too Many Girls there is nothing to see: The music is lousy, the dancing jerky and exaggerated, the jokes so lame as to be virtually nonexistent, the acting a hodgepodge of monotone and exaggeration, the plot toilet paper thin.
Don't believe a musical can be offensively painful? What can you say when "Spic and Spanish" (a dual reference to a floor cleaning product and an offensive term for Hispanic) is the most entertaining song? (ANYTHING is better than "Potawatomine.") There is one enduring classic, "I Didn't Know What Time it Was," which was mutilated by Richard Carlson, and promptly lacerated by Eddie Bracken with his corny repetition.
The foundation of the "plot" is that four star football players are hired as body guards (abadoning college at Princeton, Yale and Harvard) to report back to Dad on Lucille's love life. So she is dating an older man (Beverly Waverly) literally under the noses of the body guards, yet there is no report back, no consequences, no development and no explanation of what their relationship is, aside from the fact that he is the real reason she chose to attend Potawatomie. Can those college boys spell "incompetence"?
The rest of the story consists of following Ball around, snippets of guys chasing a football, guys chasing girls, and enormous, pointless dance numbers. Hey, anyone find a joke laying around? Oh, right, "Texas Gentile." I think the funniest line was how Potawatomie only beat Columbia by 4 points (Rodgers and Hart were Columbia alumni). Was that before or after the boys joined?
I was curious to see Ann Miller and Frances Langford. Langford's acting was forgettably dull, while Miller's was way, way, way over the top in corny artificialness (toward the end someone apparently told Miller she was supposed to be Hispanic, so she adopts a Mexican accent). Ball's acting was adequate for a B movie (this ain't Gone With The Wind); in hindsight, she might have saved the movie with a comedic performance. Desi was the only guy in the movie with any charisma (aside from Van Johnson, who glowed in the dark even as an extra). Harry Shannon, the Dad, turned in a performance so wooden they should have sent for a doctor to check his pulse.
Why did RKO make this movie? It wasn't totally unfamiliar with musicals, having made the iconic Top Hat. But RKO wasn't MGM, whose assembly line wizards could turn a telephone book into a musical extravaganza. Someone had departed with the recipe for the secret sauce.
This movie had no shortage of talent, it just didn't tap it. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's long and prolific collaboration was nearing an end, with Hart's death in 1943. Rodgers would team up with Oscar Hammerstein II and produce Oklahoma! in 1943, and write State Fair for the screen in 1945. And you may have heard of their Sound of Music.
George Abbott would go on to direct two musicals, Damn Yankees and Pajama Game, that are enjoyable. Either he didn't know what he was doing in 1940 or RKO didn't give him the time and resources. The most remarkable thing about Too Many Girls is that it didn't kill his career. I guess a director doesn't have to go down with the ship.
Poster: aimless-46 seems to have hit the nail on the head in his earlier review: RKO had a bunch of actors and staff on salary with nothing to do, plus an option on the Broadway play. Apparently they figured they had nothing to lose, provided they didn't spend too much money. Time to knock out a B musical! What have we got to lose?
But if this movie had been a financial and artistic success, RKO might not have sold out to Desilu, Lucille Ball might have continued as a serious actress and not become "Lucy," and Desi might have had a career as a dashing leading man.
Instead, "Too Many Girls" became perhaps the most influential bomb in movie history.
As Zero Mostel says during a toast in "The Producers": "Here's to failure!"