'Too Many Girls' is froth, but it's well-made froth: a fun movie musical that's just slightly below top-notch, based on a 1939 Broadway musical comedy of the same name, starring Eddie Bracken and Desi Arnaz (who repeat their stage roles here). The songs are by Rodgers and Hart, but only one song here has become a standard: 'I Didn't Know What Time It Was'. One song from the Broadway version that doesn't show up here is 'I Like to Recognise the Tune', a snappy quartet. When I interviewed Eddie Bracken in 1993, he told me that this had been his favourite song in the original Broadway production, and he was disappointed that he didn't get a chance to perform it in the film version.
One problem with 'Too Many Girls' is that it's got almost exactly the same plot as the Gershwins' musical 'Girl Crazy', but with the sexes reversed. In 'Girl Crazy', a wealthy young playboy from New York is sent by his father to a tiny ranch in the Southwest to keep him away from his multiple girlfriends. In 'Too Many Girls', a wealthy young playgirl from New York (Lucille Ball) is sent by her father to a tiny college in the Southwest to keep her away from her boyfriend ... a guy with the improbable name Beverly Waverly. 'Too Many Girls' doesn't stand up to comparison with the other show: 'Girl Crazy' came first, and it features George and Ira Gershwin's best score ever ... whereas Rodgers and Hart were not up to their usual standard when they wrote the songs for 'Too Many Girls'.
I was never a fan of Lucille Ball, because I dislike the ridiculous character she played in all her tv series and most of her movies. In 'Too Many Girls', amazingly, she gives one of her very few realistic performances as a plausible human being, and she's actually quite good here. I wish she'd played roles like this more often. It was during production of 'Too Many Girls' that Lucille Ball met Desi Arnaz, leading to their marriage and a tv series that I always considered vastly overrated. But Arnaz is quite good in 'Too Many Girls', playing a Cuban conga player (what a stretch!) who isn't at all like Ricky Ricardo. Desi and Lucy are not teamed in this movie: each of their screen characters is attracted to somebody else.
Arnaz, Bracken, Richard Carlson and Hal LeRoy play four football heroes. Arnaz and Carlson are believable as gridiron stars, and Bracken might just possibly be a place kicker ... but the slender and limp-wristed Hal LeRoy is just not plausible as a football player. LeRoy does absolutely nothing to justify his presence in this movie except for a big production number halfway through the film, in which he does a spirited tap dance on top of a tom-tom. For some reason, this dance is cut out of most television prints of this movie.
There's an amusing running gag concerning college girls who wear beanies to let the male students know whether or not the girls are sexually available. You might spot Van Johnson very briefly in two of the dance numbers. At the end of the show, Desi Arnaz whips out his conga drum, and does a very energetic rendition of 'Babalu' while all the college students form a conga line across the campus. This leads to a bizarre joke which physically disgusted me, when a biology professor peers down a microscope and he sees a bunch of microbes forming a conga line. The crude animation for this brief gag makes the microbes look nauseating: also, this joke is a rip-off of an animation gag in the 1930 movie 'Good News', in which some chalk drawings suddenly start dancing during the 'Pass that Peace Pipe' number.
'Too Many Girls' is a lot of fun. I don't like Lucille Ball's tv shows, but she gives a fine performance here, and I'll rate this movie 7 out of 10.
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