Zwei Sprengstoffverkäufer (1946)
7KZwei Sprengstoffverkäufer: Directed by William A. Seiter. With Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Brenda Joyce, Jacqueline deWit. Lou 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.
“Abbott and Costello star in u0026quot;Little Giantu0026quot;, and itu0026#39;s got some of their usual stuff, but they donu0026#39;t appear as a team in this movie. Lou is a sap hoping to make his way in the business world, only to repeatedly run into trouble in the process. Bud appears in dual roles, playing the managers of the companyu0026#39;s branches. My favorite scene was Lou performing some twisted mathematics.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhile more serious than most of Au0026amp;Cu0026#39;s movies, it does let Lou engage in his usual clumsiness. The main point is that in this setting, there are plenty of folks eager to use his naivete against him.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI understand that Bud and Lou were starting to have a falling-out when they made this. They made a few more movies together, but by the end, their relationship had soured so much that Bud learned of Louu0026#39;s death by reading about it in the newspaper (at least thatu0026#39;s what Iu0026#39;ve heard).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnyway, an interesting movie, if nothing great.”
