Aventuras de Sally

Once and a while you're lucky enough to see a film for the very first time that you never heard of before that you simply end up loving. Such is "The Fuller Brush Girl". Costarring Lucille Ball and Eddie Albert, this is one very funny film. It was written by the late/great Frank Tashlin and plays out like a live action cartoon. And no wonder. Tashlin is one of the all-time greats in the field of animated cartoons. While not as prolific as Tex Avery, his cartoons are among some of the best ever made. It was once said that Frank Tashlin directed cartoons like films and made films like cartoons. "The Fuller Brush Girl" is a perfect example. While directed by Lloyd Bacon, the real soul of the movie is Tashlin, who basically comes up with inventive gag after great inventive gag. And all of them are worked out in live action to perfection. Tex Avery once said that it was funnier if something was done in live action. And he was right! Had this been an actual cartoon, it wouldn't have been as satisfying. Ball is her usual hilarious self and Albert is at his best here as her fiancé'. So if you think you've seen every 1940s-50s comedy worth seeing and have yet to see "The Fuller Brush Girl" , then you really have something to look forward to! As they say, don't miss it! Enjoy!

The one and only big screen teaming of Lucille Ball and Eddie Albert finds them as a pair of newlyweds wondering how they're going to make the payments on their dream house. Then Lucy gets the bright idea of getting a job as a Fuller Brush Girl. Just to show how good she is, she even takes her friend Jeff Donnell's sales route.

What I'm describing is typical Lucy Ricardo behavior and it brings typical Luc Ricardo results, all kinds of complications for everyone around her and much laughs for an audience.

The Fuller Brush Girl is like a dress rehearsal for I Love Lucy, she gets to try out some material that would become familiar on the small screen very shortly. From the beginning where she blows up a telephone switchboard to a drunk act straight from the classic Vitametavegimen routine, the film pulls out all the stops.

One thing that was different is that Eddie Albert being a different type than Desi Arnaz is far more passive and far more a victim in this film than Desi ever was.

Would you believe that poor Lucy who's just trying to make a little extra money winds up being accused of the murders of Albert's boss Jerome Cowan and his wife Lee Patrick? Frank Tashlin's script glides right into that with no effort. The twenty minute or so final chase scene on a freighter is a scream from start to finish.

Special mention should go to Mel Blanc who provided the voices for a pair of South American parrots who help as well as hinder Albert and Ball and provide a wonderful commentary on the proceedings. The Fuller Brush Girl is a must for fans of Lucy.

The Fuller Brush Girl is one hilarious, light-hearted romp which shows off the comedic abilities of Eddie Albert and especially Lucy, who shows us a kind of dress rehearsal for her later antics on TV. The plot is complicated and full of incident. I can't understand the tepid reviews that this film gets, although Lucy's TV shows did not always get the kind of critical respect that they deserved, either. If you blink, you'll miss Lucy's chum Barbara Pepper as a housewife watching TV with her husband as the principals chase each other across the roof of an apartment building, colliding with the TV antennas and playing hilarious havoc with what is shown on the TV screens. The house that the Simpsons live in that Sally goes to visit is the house from the Hazel TV series, with a different doorway. I can't imagine any Lucy fan not enjoying this film, as it is probably the one film out of the many she did which really prefigures the Lucy TV character. I've read that Lucy suffered several mishaps in the making of this film, like getting powder in her eye from a rigged-up switchboard, and suffering from stomach troubles as the result of imbibing colored water substituting for wine. The trades at the time of this film's release, (1950) seemed to be in favor of this slapstick romp, and it's hard not to believe that the CBS executives didn't take a long look at this before green-lighting I Love Lucy. This is now available from Warner Archive, downloadable as a purchase from Vudu and Amazon, and is being shown on Antenna TV. See it by all means.

I'm a big I Love Lucy fan, don't get me wrong. But the slightly younger, slightly prettier, slightly more energetic Lucille Ball of the Fuller Brush Girl may actually have been Lucy at an even higher peak.

In fairness, some of her fence-climbing, bad-guy-fighting, and hurdle-leaping abilities in this film were probably those of a stunt double, which I don't believe she had on the TV show. But she's really engaged, perky, and comes alive in this film in a big way, unlike some of her post-I Love Lucy films, where she appears to be in some kind of a trance.

The scene where she is pushed out onto a burlesque stage, and forced to dance like a stripper, is one of the most hysterically funny Lucy moments I've ever seen, on TV or film.

She is ably supported by Eddie Albert as her lovable but slightly dimwitted husband, and a very capable cast. The plot is not only a comedy, but is also a murder mystery with surprise twists and turns, with as much credibility as a lot of other murder mystery films I've seen. And for fans of The Fuller Brush Man, there's a nice little surprise.

It's great to see Lucy as a young, highly-talented, up-and-coming starlet who is about to make her mark in a big, big way. This film should be required watching for all aspiring actors and actresses, as it shows exactly what Hollywood and the public are looking for -- and found in Lucille Ball.

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.