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Memorable, crazy movie

Boring

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

It's right around 1936-1938 that, in my humble view, Hollywood movies gain maturity and sophistication. This film is on the cusp, but isn't quite there. And, for Jean Arthur, her greatest successes are also just around the corner (perhaps with 1938's "You Can't Take It With You").There's a period midway through the movie where, it seems to me, things drift a bit. I'm not even quite sure why George Brent's character wants to have a fling with the floozy secretary...not well established. And then the wrap-up of the film seems a bit weak to me, as well.Jean Arthur is good here...playing a bit of a prudish secretary-type at the beginning of the film...sort of reminds me of her next to last film role in "A Foreign Affair", although she comes off much better here. I like George Brent, but I didn't find him totally convincing here; of course his best films were often those with Bette Davis. Ruth Donnelly is interesting here...sort of reminds me of a slightly more gentle Eve Arden-type role.To whom would I recommend this film? Well, I guess if you enjoy Jean Arthur films (and I myself am in that category), you should see this film. Otherwise, I could take it or leave it.

Any industry with an accelerated worker shelf life (which includes sales, pro sports, and certainly show business) is ripe for serving as a prime example of what corporations do to 90 per cent of Americans (i.e., the working class): look for pretty faces, then chew them up and spit them out. Set in the context of the fictitious "Body and Brain" health magazine editorial offices, MORE THAN A SECRETARY would have been slightly more plausible in a moving pictures studio (but THAT would have struck Columbia Pictures too close to home).All the secretaries portrayed in this film, other than elderly spinster Helen (of undisclosed sexual orientation, though she jumps at the chance for an intimate two-girl camping trip with her roommate, Carol) blatantly state they are only jumping into the secretarial pool with an eye toward matrimony (i.e., giving themselves to the boss, body and soul). Some try to learn typing and spelling; others conclude, "Why bother?" As a harder, more educated, and more intelligent worker than her corporate boss Fred, Carol rights his Body & Brain sinking ship virtually overnight with her working class common sense. Fred's reward to Carol? He finagles a way to get her out of his sight completely while dumping ALL of his remaining work load in her lap. What's left in good ol' Fred's lap? It's not hard to imagine, seeing him weak in bed after drunken all-nighters with Carol's replacement in the private secretary slot, mercenary no-talent total airhead Maizie, Carol's secretarial school flunk-out from the movie's prologue. The film hammers home its didactic moral by showing that the richer and more powerful a corporate goon, the bigger a fool: Maizie lets go of Fred only to get her hooks into a much bigger fish, Fred's boss, magazine mogul Mr. Crosby. (If regular grade school math teachers ran Wall Street, instead of 12th generation Mayflower descendant Ivy League frat boys, the U.S. would have been spared the trauma of both this movie's Great Depression and today's Great Recession).To summarize, MORE THAN A SECRETARY's message is that the wealthiest 10% of Americans hide behind corporate shenanigans in what is still predominantly a good ol' boy's club, enslaving the remaining 90% of us to do all the useful work as long as we're youthful, and preferably pretty.

GEORGE BRENT, editor of a fitness magazine dedicated to diet and exercise, takes JEAN ARTHUR as a secretary--a woman who quits her job as a typing instructor to find out if she can find romance with a handsome and very particular employer if she pretends to be his full-time secretary. Seems that he's been unimpressed with all of the less skillful applicants.RUTH DONNELLY, LIONEL STANDER and REGINALD DENNY have fun with subordinate roles in this wacky ode to screwball comedy. The fun comes in wondering just how Arthur is going to change his staid ways and overly dedicated devotion to exercise and body building. Of course what Brent needs is a fresh viewpoint on selling points for his dignified magazine and Arthur is just the gal to give it to him.It's the sort of run-of-the-mill, breezy comedy that studios churned out for Depression weary audiences--so don't look for realism here. But JEAN ARTHUR is at her perky best and GEORGE BRENT manages to unbend a little in a role with comic overtones. DOROTHEA KENT tries hard, but manages not to steal scenes in a ditsy dumb blonde role that would have been perfect for either Jean Harlow or Judy Holliday (at a later time).Trivia note: As surprising as it seems, this trifle of a comedy played at Radio City Music Hall on its original release.

I'd never heard of this film until recently it was recommended to me as a pleasant but easily overlooked Jean Arthur filmJean Arthur's range is hardly tested in this one - she plays Carole a nice girl next-door type with the typical Arthur intelligence but without any of the more complex qualities, which in certain of her films drew such memorable performances.George Brent, as Fred Gilbert, is similarly untested in this film (as in most of his films) but is in the additionally unfortunate position of providing the comedy in the romance, initially through his health regime obsession and then his superficial attraction to Maizie (Dorothea Kent), (the latter also being the means by which an essentially simple story is sufficiently prolonged to allow a feature length gap between the boy meets girl beginning and the inevitable - this is 1930's romantic comedy - boy gets girl ending).A modern audience may not react too well to Fred's comments about a woman's role in business or his attempt at ruthlessly (in intent if not in effect) resolving his `Maizie situation' once the attraction has palled. However the main problem with this film is not that the women's movement has moved on 70 years since the film was made - 1930's comedies are after all, remembered for the strong and independent heroines and Fred is of course made to regret and reconsider his words and actions. It is simply that you do wonder a little just what Carole sees in him. Fortunately this film is saved from the romance being completely unbelievable by Carole's obvious recognition (and Jean Arthur's ability to convey) that she loves Fred regardless of his faults.What is slightly harder to accept is Fred's overlooking Carole for so long (at least once she is out of the rather scary suit and spectacles she wears in the film's opening scene). Even allowing for the fact that anyone can make a fool of him/herself when it comes to love, Fred's abrupt changes of heart, especially the first volt face when he decides to employ Maizie, left me a little puzzled. A nice clue is given in the scene where Fred follows Carole to the secretarial school and in response to he snappish `I'm busy' he sharply retorts, `I never saw you when you weren't'. However this is not explored fully nor given elsewhere as an explanation for his foolishness (at just 80 minutes long, an additional 2-3 minutes to deepen this rather more satisfactory explanation for Fred's behaviour would not exactly have overdone things).In addition to the main cast there is the usual nice support from Lionel Stander and Ruth Donnelly, Columbia contract actors, as likely as not to be in any Jean Arthur film of this time. I'm not sure why but Lionel Stander saying the word `bellicose' just cracks me up. There are some nice scenes between Ruth Donnelly and Jean Arthur, which are a rarity in a film genre where scenes between 2 women are usually about romantic rivalry and bitchy exchanges. This element is of course present in the scenes between Carole and Maizie, the latter being as unpleasant and manipulative as the audience needs her to be in order that we do not need to worry about her (or Fred's treatment of her) when she is ultimately dispatched (landing on her feet in any event).If you like 1930's Hollywood romantic comedy then this is a sweet, unassuming film, which, while not as memorable as many other films of Hollywood's golden age, is still worth a look.