Lee van Atta Movies

Lucille Ball landed her first starring comedy role in the mile-a-minute farce The Affairs of Annabel. Lucy of course plays the title character, a screwball movie actress who indulges in one wacky publicity stunt after another at the behest of her press agent Morgan (Jack Oakie). To promote an upcoming prison picture, Annabel gets herself arrested-and has quite a time extricating herself from behind bars. The limit comes when she gathers research for her next film by hiring on as a housemaid, culminating in a fake kidnapping that turns out to be the real thing. Matching Ball and Oakie laugh for laugh is Fritz Feld as a bombastic foreign director. Cowritten by future Desilu Studios executive Bert Grant, The Affairs of Annabel was popular enough to inspire an equally hilarious sequel, Annabel Takes a Tour. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Fulton Oursler, the prolific Reader's Digest editor whose range extended from detective stories to religious books, tried his hand at domestic drama with Second Wife. The title character is Gertrude Michael, recently married to Walter Abel--though not that recently, since she's about to have a baby. Abel discovers that his son by his first wife is ill in a remote Swiss village, and is forced to leave Wife Number Two alone during childbirth. She resents Abel's absence and prepares to walk out in the company of another man, but her erstwhile lover wants nothing to do with children. The plot is worked out to everyone's satisfaction but the audience, which recognized Second Wife as an antiquated remake of a 1930 weeper of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi