More Than a Secretary

With Jean Arthur, Ruth Donnelly, and Lionel Stander in the cast, More Than A Secretary starts to look like a road company Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Too bad it isn't quite up to the standard of that comedy classic.

But this was more an example of the fluff that Jean Arthur was asked to carry in her career. Not every film could be a Mr. Deeds.

Jean and Ruth Donnelly run a secretarial school from which they graduate women of all kinds including Dorothea Kent, a poor man's Marie Wilson. Dorothea's typing and shorthand leave much to be desired, but she does have other assets and his certainly decorative enough.

Jean goes to work for health magazine editor George Brent who is maniacal on the subject of fitness, sexist in his views of women, and something of a puritan. But Jean proves pretty indispensable as his magazine circulation starts to boom.

But then Reginald Denny who has a jealous wife dumps Dorothea back on George who with Jean has to put up with her incompetence. Something has to give.

The whole thing was rather silly to me. Why they don't just fire this bimbo is beyond me. Maybe Denny's hormones are making the decision for him, but Brent's certainly aren't.

Maybe I'm too harsh on the film though. I in fact worked for a woman who headed a state agency and she was so stupid she couldn't probably spell the word. I could have seen her like Kent, running Tina's Nail Salon on Cropsey Avenue in Brooklyn. But she also was in her job because somebody's hormones went into overdrive.

George Brent was borrowed from Warner Brothers by Harry Cohn for this film. My only question is why did he use a favor from Jack Warner for this. Or was Brent being punished?