THE MOVIEGOER

A hectic triple-header romance between a dizzy blonde stenographer, her stuffed-shirt boss, and her sea-going sweetie, "A Girl, A Guy, and A Gob" is Producr Harold Lloyd's funniest show since he swapped his horned rimes for a megaphone. In its best moments the picture is side-splitting farce with Lucille Ball showing the potentialities of another Ann Sothern as the pretty bit of platinum that couldn't decide between a guy with "Brooks" on his vest and a gob with hair on his chest. In its worst moment the feature dribbles into a standard Hollywood potboiler which never boils over. Devoid of plot but full of Saroyanesque minor characters, "A Girl, A Guy, and A Gob" is, like a Harvard education, patchy but good.

"Topper Returns," Hal Roach's third venture into ectoplasmic comedy, blends murder and laugher into a mixture which falls only inches short of a Bob Hope rib-tickling, spine-tingling cocktail. Bovine-bosomed Joan Blondell as the lady who vanishes and Roland Young as Cosmo Topper, the defective detective, pace an excellent cast which includes Rochester, Carole Landis, and Billie Burke. Much above the average little girl who isn't there type of picture, this is if anything better than Topper's first two appearances.

The news offers all three sides of the current shipping debate--Knox shouting for convoys, Wheeler shouting against conveys, and Willkie shouting.