Beauty for the Asking

Many years back when Lucille Ball was TCM's Star of the Month, Carol Burnett did a piece for the channel talking about Ball. One of the things Burnett says is that Hollywood apparently just didn't know how to use Lucy (at least not until she took control over her career by going into TV). A good example of this is the RKO B movie Beauty for the Asking.

Patric Knowles plays Denny Williams, who at the start of the movie is about to propose to Flora Barton (Frieda Inescort), the heiress to a copper fortune and somebody who can leave Denny financially set for life. However, Denny has another woman in his life who thinks he's going to propose to her. That woman is Jean Russell (Lucille Ball), a beautician in a high-class salon. Jean, needless to say, is shocked when she finds that Denny is going to be marrying another woman.

Her shock causes her to screw up on the job and get her and her friend and roommate Gwen (Inez Courtney) fired. Fortunately for Jean, however, she's been doing a bit of amateur chemistry, trying to create a new type of cold cream in the kitchen of their apartment. And she thinks she's finally come up with the perfect formula. The only problem is going to be getting it on the market and getting people to notice it.

Jean, however, has chutzpah, and walks right in to the office of advertising guru Jeff Martin (Donald Woods). After some initial confusion since Jeff, not knowing Jane, expects her to be one of the models he's using for a photo shoot, Jeff learns the truth from Jean. Amazingly, he decides that advertising this untested cold cream is a good idea. They just need a bunch of money to set up shop.

Together, they come up with a plan that has Jean being portrayed as a countess, with free samples of the cream being given out to socialites who might be able to back the product. Eventually, one woman does decide to do it: Flora Barton-Williams. Now, Flora doesn't know Jean at all, and Jean really only knows Flora from the papers and having stopped outside the wedding. Poor Denny begins to realize that he's liable to get in even more trouble for raising suspicion that he only married for the money, since his previous job was selling some of the other products that Jean used.

Still, Jean is able to get the money and make a thriving business in part from selling that cold cream, but just as much from running a high-class salon of her own. At least, until Flora learns about Denny and Jean's prior relationship. Jean responds by trying to make Flora beautiful on the outside, giving up Denny so as not to be seen breaking up a marriage. Still, for much of the movie's running time you wonder whether Jean and Denny aren't supposed to wind up together at the end.

As I said at the beginning, Lucille Ball got put into a lot of movies that today would seem atypical for her, since most people probably first got to know Lucy from her various TV series that showed off her zany side. Beauty for the Asking is a drama with a few laughs. It's also one that suffers from a subpar script. Lucy is the lead here and certainly shows professionalism. I think she does also show that she could do drama, at least lighter drama. She gets about the most you could expect from the script.

Beauty for the Asking is the sort of movie that probably should have been released to DVD courtesy of those four-movie TCM-branded box sets that they used to release through Warner Home Video. Unfortunately, it only seems to be available in a more pricey standalone from the Warner Archive. That's a bit of a shame, because even the atypical Lucille Ball movies deserve to be seen.