This has its charms but is definitely a step down from It Should Happen to You. The plot is not dissimilar in that Holliday plays a plucky and stubborn young woman who does things her way and ends up making huge waves, only this time she breaks into business. It also has a love interest, but he's rather shockingly old and dumpy: was this written by a middle-aged dumpy man? Anyway, the film (which features voice over by George Burns - and that's his sole role in the movie) opens with a stockholders' meeting at International Projects, where the company's founder Edward L. McKeever (whom Burns reveals to be the only honest man on the board) is about to leave to go to Washington to serve in the new administration.
The rest of the board, led by unctuous Brit John T. Blessington present McKeever (who is paying more attention to his sandwich) with a leaving present of a gold key that will open any door in the building (yes, this is like the gun that you see in the first act in that it will be used in the third) as a sign that he is "always welcome." Holliday, as Laura Partridge, keeps interrupting affairs.
It turns out she owns 10 stocks as a result of being kind to her elderly neighbor who left them to her in his will. She is outraged at the 6 figure incomes the board members earn and grills them on what they do and how often they have to do it. After the meeting is over, Laura and McKeever meet at a lunch counter, where she is pleased to see him ordering bicarbonate of soda, because she warned him about eating his sandwich too fast. He ends up giving her a lift to her place (even though it's out of the way and they have to cross a bridge whose toll is a quarter) and obviously becomes a bit smitten by her. (This is reminiscent of the car trip taken by Jean Arthur and Edward Arnold in Easy Living, an otherwise superior film (although lacking Holliday).)
It turns out she is a struggling actress, who prefers the stage but doesn't like Shakespeare because unless you're a king, you never get to sit down. She informs McKeever that she decided International Projects was a good company when she found out the refrigerator it makes sells for $80 more than anyone else's - that proved they knew how to make money. Then he heads off to Washington. She, on the other hand, has gotten a taste for rabble-rousing at the stockholders' meetings, and continues to attend each one. This leads the board to get nervous, because, crooked as Burns warned us they are, they intend to give themselves huge bonuses and stock options and are afraid these will not escape her eagle eye. So Blessington has a brainwave: to hire Laura to come work for the company, so they can keep her too busy to attend. She gets an office and a secretary (whose job is to keep her from knowing too much) and a purview of looking after the small investors, a topic dear to her heart (as it had been to McKeever). Blessington et. al. intended this just to take the form of answering their letters when they came in, but there is far too little of this to keep Laura busy, so she has the secretary (Amelia) - who quickly falls under her spell - to get her the directory of all the stockholders and she takes to writing letters to them. Laura also immediately notices that the buttoned-up Amelia and the office manager Mark Jenkins are sweet on each other but won't admit it, so she helps kindle a romance (in part by getting Amelia to improve her hairdo).
Meanwhile, the board of directors is furious with McKeever because he isn't sending fat federal contracts and requisition orders their way, so they get him to come and visit. When he does, he bumps into Laura and she takes him to her office and explains what she's doing. Somehow in that visit it comes out that he wanted to be an actor too, and he gives a rendition of a speech by Spartacus that he learned as a boy that causes the ladies from the typing pool who are listening at the door to titter and Laura to smile fondly.
MEANWHILE, the bursar tells the rest of the board that Laura is costing the company a fortune in postage and that Amelia, far from keeping her from trouble, actually got her the list of stockholders. So they decide to fire Amelia. On finding out, Laura is about to quit in sympathy (and gets as far as packing up most of her things, including one of a pair of galoshes, that in a running joke she is never able to pair up with the other) when she opens a letter marked "urgent" from one of the stockholders she has been corresponding with to discover that the board member who was hired to replace McKeever, who is Blessington's hapless brother-in-law, drove the company (Apex clocks) that the writer's husband worked in into bankruptcy, unaware that International owned Apex. Laura uses her knowledge of this massive blunder to get Amelia her job back and herself much more staff for writing even more letters.
The board's next plot to neutralize Laura is to send her to Washington to use her wiles on McKeever (who refused all unethical behavior on his visit), with the justification that doing so will help the small investors both of them claim to love. She is not fooled, but agrees to the trip with the plan of getting McKeever to come back and take back the company. While in Washington she falls for McKeever, and, while nothing untoward happens, she and McKeever are seen visiting each other's rooms in their fancy hotel. This ends up being used against them when they try to go back and get McKeever back in charge. The Board simply says "no," and because McKeever had to give up his holdings in the company when he went to Washington (ah, the good-old pre-Trump days), he seems stymied. But then he hits on the plan of using the fact that the board sent Laura to Washington to get him to help the company to take them to court, because that's against the law (although probably not because it violates the Mann Act, as Laura seems to think).
HOWEVER, the board again fight back, and their ace in the hole is accusing Laura of going there because she loves McKeever, and this is where the testimony of the hotel staff comes in (and Laura admits she loves McKeever in front of the court). And then the board fires Laura, Amelia AND Mark. HOWEVER, the last twist is that, back at Laura's place (hiding from the press) McKeever finds out that all the small stockholders appoint Laura as their proxy with little slips inside their letters, and maybe, if they can get hold of Laura's mail, they'll have enough stocks to stage a revolt. But the board preempts them by hiding the mail in Blessington's office! But McKeever still has the key! And, of course, they make it to the stockholder's meeting and get to fire the board! And stay tuned for the last minute of the movie, which switches to color, and is the explanation for the title of the film.
Overall, charming, but slight. Everyone in it is perfectly fine, and it whizzes past just fine, but it hasn't the inspired writing of It Should Happen to You.
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