one of my absolute favorites!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

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.

This film is a good example of the actors and their personas being MUCH better than the material they are given! While I have always loved Jean Arthur as well as George Brent in films, they are much too good for this tripe. In particular, Jean tries very hard in this film, but Brent's character is so poorly written and stupid that it drags the entire film to a standstill and looks as if it were written by some inexperienced hacks.The film begins with Jean and Ruth Donnelly at a secretarial school they own. So far, so good--both are wonderful actresses and I had my hopes set VERY high since they were in the film. Then, 'Maizie' (Dorthea Kent) makes an appearance as a ditsy hussy and the film begins to slowly slide downward (she was a truly cardboard and annoying character). So I was THRILLED when the film moved from this school to the offices of a magazine editor played by Brent. Apparently, he was such a demanding boss that secretary after secretary from the school either quit or were fired and so Jean goes to give him a piece of her mind. Instead, she is smitten by him and takes the job herself.At this point, I was intrigued by the film. No major problems. However, when she came to work the next day, Brent's character was such a ridiculous and impossible to believe jerk that the film really began to spiral downward very quickly. Not only was he bombastic and a total health nut, but his having everyone do group exercises (like those done in many Japanese companies, by the way) was poorly executed. What person would order these exercises and then open the window and let all their many, many papers blow across the office and yet continue exercising?! Surely it would take hours to rearrange all the papers--why not stop for five seconds to close the window! This sort of extreme and stupid behavior continued from then on, such as when they went out to eat at a vegetarian restaurant, go for long, long walks in the middle of pouring rain and talk on and on and on (ad nauseum) about "right living and exercise". This was all supposed to be funny, but really came off poorly, as his character seemed more like a silly caricature of a person! Now if this wasn't bad enough, about midway through the film, Maizie re-appeared and then the film's romance between the leads was completely derailed. At this point, Brent ("Mr. Extreme") became such an obnoxious jerk that it was small wonder that Jean didn't just kill him! The bottom line is that it must have taken a lot of work to but Brent and Arthur in a film and have me so bored and annoyed by the whole thing. Considering all the warm and wonderful films these two made, it's amazing that this film was as poor as it was.

Did anyone wonder why the trailer had no door? Must have been a creation of the prop department. Why in the world would anyone want the guy after fooling around with Mazie. The guy seems like a real jerk rather than a leading man. And that mustache does not help George Brent either. I thought it was real weak acting from pros than sure can do better. Stander and Donnely really stand out, and The girl that plays Mazie isn't too bad either. There are so many loose plot lines in this that it's hard to accept any of them. I like comedies from this period, but this one is a waste of time unless you are a BIG Jean Arthur fan. Columbia should have thrown the Three Stooges in for some serious plot twist.