The Fuller Brush Girl

Bacon may have directed, but the sight gags are pure Tashlin. His cartoonish style is perfect for out-and-out slapstick. Note the number of physical exaggerations, right out of storyboard animation. Actually, Tashlin's the perfect spark to get Ball's comedic career in motion, which I gather this movie did.

The plot line itself is patterned after the many occupational comedies of the time—The Good Humor Man (!950), The Yellow Cab Man (1950), etc.-- as Sally (Ball) and Humphrey (Albert) get hilariously mixed up with cops and crooks. Red Skelton even puts in an amusing cameo from his Fuller Brush Man (1948).

The gags fly fast and furious maybe too much so, along with an overlong climax. Still, the set-ups are consistently inventive, while Ball gets to show a lot of sex appeal along with the clowning. Albert strives manfully to keep up, but it's Ball who gets the close-ups and the spotlight. Catch her versatility, for example, as she moves effortlessly into her amusing nightclub act.

I don't know why the pro's consistently downgrade the film—TCM giving it only two stars out of four. True, the slapstick gets a little frenetic at times, but the results remain pretty darn funny and provide a great early glimpse of TV's top comedienne in the making.