THE FULLER BRUSH MAN sold sufficient tickets in 1948 to place 18th on the year’s boxoffice roundup, notching a win for star Red Skelton. The slapsticking was produced & directed by S. Sylvan Simon and written by Frank Tashlin and Devery Freeman. Simon steered the comedian in another romp that year, A Southern Yankee and back in 1941 had directed him in his first starring feature, Whistling In The Dark. While accepting Skelton’s skills as a clown, we never warmed up much to his goofall shenanigans, on film or TV: his fans (mostly in their dotage) will enjoy this movie, and it’s easy to see why kids of the era would get joy from it. What makes this go down easier is the co-star presence of the ever-welcome Janet Blair, 27, whose smile, guile and style light up any scene she’s in.

Monumentally clumsy ‘Red Jones’ (Skelton, 35) gets fired from his job as a street cleaner, latest in a long line of employment fiascoes. His loyal sweetheart ‘Ann Eliot’ (Blair) is getting near the end of her rope with his dopiness but helps him get a job as a door-to-door salesman with the Fuller Brush company, where she works as a secretary. During his valiant attempts to get one of his two left feet in the door, Red stumbles across a racketeering operation, and becomes an unwitting (his supply of wits limited) suspect in a homicide. Can Red convince Ann he’s innocent? Will she help him defeat the bad guys? Wild guesses are allowed.

Some clever sight gags, others than run on too long. Blair hangs in there and does her equal bit in a lengthy chase & fight that wraps it all up. Columbia Pictures was giddy over the $8,200,000 gross (the production tab was just $350,000), enough that two years later they rolled out The Fuller Brush Girl, starring farce doyenne Lucille Ball.

93 minutes, with Don McGuire, Hillary Brooke, Adele Jurgens, Arthur Space, Nicholas Joy, Donald Curtis,Trudy Marshall, Verna Felton, Jimmy Hunt, Stanley Andrews, Dick Wessell.

Janet Blair, 1921-2007