The Fuller Brush Girl (1950)

Director:

Lloyd Bacon

Writer:

Frank Tashlin (writer)

Release Date:

15 September 1950 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

THE FULLER BRUSH GIRL HAS SOMETHING THE FULLER BRUSH MAN DIDN'T HAVE! (original print ad - all caps)

Plot:

Scatterbrained Sally Elliott gets a job as a Fuller brush girl and, as expected, her attempts at selling cosmetics door-to-door are disastrous...

Plot Keywords:

Cosmetics | Parrot | Switchboard | Bananas | Smuggling

Cast

Lucille Ball	...	Sally Elliot
Eddie Albert	...	Humphrey Briggs
Carl Benton Reid	...	Mr. Christy
Gale Robbins	...	Ruby Rawlings
Jeff Donnell	...	Jane Bixby
Jerome Cowan	...	Harvey Simpson
John Litel	...	Mr. Watkins
Fred Graham	...	Rocky Mitchell
Lee Patrick	...	Claire Simpson
Arthur Space	...	Insp. Rodgers

Also Known As:

Affairs of Sally (UK)

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:S | Sweden:Btl

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Humphrey is climbing down the mattress springs, you can see the wire holding him up.

Quotes:

Sally Elliot: It only took you a year to finish that correspondence course.
Humphrey Briggs: Yeah, but that was a six month course.

Movie Connections:

Featured in 100 Years of Comedy (1997) (V)

Soundtrack:

Put the Blame on Mame

A mishmash of slapstick comedy was Lucy's swansong on film...

The slapstick is so thick you can cut it with a knife in this farce from the '50s, right before Lucy made a mad dash for TV and became America's funniest housewife in the I LOVE LUCY series.

LUCILLE BALL and EDDIE ALBERT play an engaged couple needing money to buy a house before getting married and ending up in a series of misadventures when they get embroiled in a plot that involves thievery and murder.

JEROME COWAN as a crooked boss, JOHN LITEL as the mastermind of murder and theft, and GALE ROBBINS as a burlesque singer (she does "Put the Blame On Mame") put some zest into the frantic plot that spins out of control once the slapstick takes over. (Robbins had a saucy role in MGM's "The Barkleys of Broadway" with Astaire and Rogers as the gal with all the Southern charm).

For the finale, there's a frantic chase aboard an ocean liner involving parrots who talk too much that makes for a funny routine, but nothing seems too far above the half-hour situation comedies that were all the rage in the '50s.

It's wacky low-brow comedies like this that were responsible for Lucille Ball's quick exit from films to try her hand at TV. Good thing for us, but too bad she never found her niche on screen.

Good for a few laughs, but Lucy found better material than this on TV.