Too Many Girls (1940)

When a spoiled heiress (Lucille Ball) goes off to a small college in New Mexico, her father (Harry Shannon) hires four football players (Richard Carlson, Eddie Bracken, Desi Arnaz, Hal Le Roy) to act as bodyguards. Based on the Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and directed by George Abbott (PAJAMA GAME). This lightweight college musical has nothing on its mind but football and girls and songs. It's no GOOD NEWS (the best college movie musical) but it's inoffensive. The film version retains most of the Rodgers & Hart songs from the Broadway show but it's not one of their best scores. The most famous song from the show is the lovely ballad I Didn't Know What Time It Was. Musically, the film's two highlights are the Latin production numbers choreographed by Leroy Prinz, Spic And Spanish with Arnaz and Ann Miller and the Conga number which ends the film. Arnaz, Bracken and Van Johnson were in the original Broadway cast and yes, this was the film where Ball and Arnaz met and fell in love and married two months after the film's release. Also in the cast: Frances Langford and Grady Sutton.