Sucking up: 10 boom era vacuum cleaner salesmen
A recurring trope of post-war movies, also exploited on TV, famously in episodes of Abbott and Costello (https://imdb.1eye.us/title/tt0504554/) and I Love Lucy (https://imdb.1eye.us/title/tt0609331/) that oddly aired only ten days apart in January 1953.
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- DirectorHugh BennettStarsJimmy LydonCharles SmithMary AndersonIn order to impress Phyllis Michael, Henry Aldrich takes a sales job. Soon he is involved with vacuum cleaners, motor boats and a father-son race at a picnic in which he hires a tramp to play his father. Don't ask. He also has to pay for a motor boat which he accidentally destroyed by accident. Henry has some problems to be solved, and his friend Dizzy Stevens isn't likely to be of any help.
- DirectorWilliam A. SeiterStarsBud AbbottLou CostelloBrenda JoyceLou Costello plays a country bumpkin vacuum-cleaner salesman, working for the company run by the crooked Bud Abbott. To try to keep him under his thumb, Abbott convinces Costello that he's a crackerjack salesman. This comedy is somewhat like The Time of Their Lives (1946), in that Abbott and Costello don't have much screen time together and there are very few vaudeville bits woven into the plot.
- DirectorAlejandro GalindoStarsFernando SolerDavid SilvaMartha RothA strict patriarch exercises almost absolute control over his family and uses it to impose his vision of order and conservative family values. However, the budding sexuality of some of his children causes the union to unravel.
- DirectorRichard PottierStarsFernandelGermaine MonteroBernard LajarrigeIn spite of his failures as a peddler, Casimir guaranteed his fiance that this time the vacuum cleaners will work for good. But he's still unsuccessful until he go to the appartment of Paul-Andre, a painter who was engaged by correspondence to a rich south-American woman. That's exactly when she arrive armed with a gun infuriated after she had received a rupture letter from the man she had never seen. She mistakenly took Casimir as her painter lover. Casimir his ready to flee until he learned she owned many hotels, a thousand rooms in fact. "A thousand rooms, a thousand vacuum cleaners", he suddenly think.
- DirectorJohn HustonStarsHumphrey BogartJennifer JonesGina LollobrigidaOn their way to Africa are a group of rogues who hope to get rich there, and a seemingly innocent British couple. They meet and things happen...
- DirectorRobert DayBasil DeardenStarsAlastair SimGeorge ColeTerry-ThomasAn assassin is annoyed by a vacuum cleaner salesman determined to stop him.
- DirectorRoger CormanStarsPaul BirchBeverly GarlandMorgan JonesAn alien agent from the distant planet Davana is sent to Earth via a high-tech matter transporter. There, he terrorizes Southern California in an attempt to acquire blood for his dying race, the result of a devastating nuclear war.
- DirectorJacques TatiStarsJacques TatiJean-Pierre ZolaAdrienne ServantieMonsieur Hulot visits the technology-driven world of his sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, but he can't quite fit into the surroundings.
- DirectorCarol ReedStarsAlec GuinnessMaureen O'HaraBurl IvesJim Wormold, who is a vacuum cleaner salesman, participates as an Agent in the British Secret Service. But he soon realizes that his plans by lying are going to get him into trouble.
- DirectorRichard BrooksStarsBurt LancasterJean SimmonsArthur KennedyA fast-talking traveling salesman with a charming, loquacious manner convinces a sincere evangelist that he can be an effective preacher for her cause.