THE FULLER BRUSH GIRL is Lucille Ball, following in the footsteps—or clown shoes—of Red Skelton’s 1948 hit The Fuller Brush Man for 85 minutes of 1950 slapstick silliness, co-starring a ready-steady Eddie Albert. Same writer as in the earlier flick, Frank Tashlin,  with a different director, established pro Lloyd Bacon.

Switchboard operator ‘Sally Elliot’ (Lucy) and her husband-to-be ‘Humphrey Briggs’ (Eddie) work together at a steamship company, hoping to somehow save enough to buy a house and live happily ever. Humphrey manages to get selected as a cargo supervisor, and that’s good because Sally spectacularly loses her job after accidentally destroying the switchboard—she has klutz appeal. Tackling the Laws of Direct Rejection, Sally tries her hand at door-to-door sales with the Fuller Brush company. Unfortunately Humphrey’s new position entails him being used as a pawn in a smuggling operation, and then Sally knocks at the wrong door and gets knocked cold—by a dame involved in the criminal ring. Framed, chased, shot at, the couple have to face up to a gang and prove themselves in multiple areas.

Like its daffy predecessor, this has sight gag fun with sales situations and then finagles a mystery element for padding: smuggling, murders, Lucy clobbered with a pistol). It’s all ridiculous but thanks to the skill sets of the leads, who make a good comic match, much of it is amusing. At 39, Ball had 17 years in show biz, logging 77 parts, uncredited bits to leads. Albert, 44, had 12 years in and 26 movies under his belt. Lucy enjoyed a big hit that year, Fancy Pants, with Bob Hope. This didn’t do as well, but was still a reasonable success; best guess for its gross would be somewhat north of $2,000,000.

Skelton appears in a bit. The supporting cast is a slew of familiar-faced era character actors: Gale Robbins (killer gams alert!), Jerome Cowan, Jeff Donnell, Carl Benton Reid, Lee Patrick, Arthur Space (back from the earlier romp), Mary Treen (funny bit as a magazine saleswoman), John Litel, Fred Graham, Russ Conway, John Doucette, Myron Healey, Frank Wilxox, Jean Willes. Nicely photographed by Charles Lawton, Jr.