The Fuller Brush Girl

Another movie that I've had on my DVR for several months is the Lucille Ball comedy The Fuller Brush Girl. I don't think it's coming up on TCM any time soon, but it does show up from time to time on Cinevault Classics, one of the FAST channels that's on both the Roku Channel and TubiTV, albeit with commercials. (Indeed, it's one of the movies regularly in the promos.)

The movie begins with a comedic credits sequence of Lucy trying to see cosmetics, which is what Fuller Brush girls do, although she's not actually working for Fuller immediately after the credits. Instead, she's Sally Elliot, a switchboard operator for the Maritime Steamship Company. She works there with her fiancé Humphrey, who's a filing clerk. The two together would like to buy a house in the sort of new development that appeared in Lucy's earlier movie Miss Grant Takes Richmond, but they don't make enough money.

There's a chance, however, when Sally learns that the previous inventory has been fired. There's a chance for Harvey to get a promotion. What they don't know, however, is that their boss, Harvey Simpson (Jerome Cowan), is actually using the company as a front for smuggling. He could use an inventory man who doesn't realize what's going on, and Harvey fits that role perfectly. He's surprised, however, when he gets the promotion, since not five minutes earlier he just had the boss yelling at him to get the hell out of the office.

Meanwhile, Sally being in need of a job, she tries to apply with the Fuller Brush company since her best friend also has a territory in town with them. But Sally is as incompetent as Lucill Ball's character in her previous Columbia film Miss Grant Takes Richmond, which is an opportunity to engage in some side humor of the sort at which Lucille Ball was always quite good. But there's also a plot point here.

Simpson and his wife have gotten into an argument over some of those Fuller cosmetics Sally's girlfriend had brought to Sally's old office, and wants Sally to explain to Mrs. Simpson (Lee Patrick) what really happened. In the meantime, however, Mrs. Simpson decides to oust her husband from the shipping company, which would really screw up that smuggling. So Mr. Simpson hires a burlesque girl to impersonate Sally for that explanation, and then has the burlesque girl murder Mrs. Simpson. Sally shows up as a Fuller Brush girl just as the burlesque girl has murdered Mrs. Simpson. Said burlesque performer knows Sally out and frames her for the killing. Sally and Humphrey have to solve the case while evading the police, leading to a comic finale aboard one of the steamship company's ships.

The Fuller Brush Girl was made not long before Lucille Ball decamped for TV to start I Love Lucy. Ball is in reasonably good -- and reasonably typical -- zany form here, although I will admit that I prefer Miss Grant Takes Richmond. I think that's in part because Lucy was better paired there with William Holden, and because Lucy was the only incompetent one in that movie. Here, both leads are supposed to be somewhat incompetent, and that doesn't really work as well. Still, The Fuller Brush Girl is more than pleasant enough, and definitely worth a watch.