The Fuller Brush Girl is one hilarious, light-hearted romp which shows off the comedic abilities of Eddie Albert and especially Lucy, who shows us a kind of dress rehearsal for her later antics on TV. The plot is complicated and full of incident. I can't understand the tepid reviews that this film gets, although Lucy's TV shows did not always get the kind of critical respect that they deserved, either. If you blink, you'll miss Lucy's chum Barbara Pepper as a housewife watching TV with her husband as the principals chase each other across the roof of an apartment building, colliding with the TV antennas and playing hilarious havoc with what is shown on the TV screens. The house that the Simpsons live in that Sally goes to visit is the house from the Hazel TV series, with a different doorway. I can't imagine any Lucy fan not enjoying this film, as it is probably the one film out of the many she did which really prefigures the Lucy TV character. I've read that Lucy suffered several mishaps in the making of this film, like getting powder in her eye from a rigged-up switchboard, and suffering from stomach troubles as the result of imbibing colored water substituting for wine. The trades at the time of this film's release, (1950) seemed to be in favor of this slapstick romp, and it's hard not to believe that the CBS executives didn't take a long look at this before green-lighting I Love Lucy. This is now available from Warner Archive, downloadable as a purchase from Vudu and Amazon, and is being shown on Antenna TV. See it by all means.
Review of The Fuller Brush Girl
