The Fuller Brush Man never came knocking at our door. I’m very familiar with the image of this ubiquitous salesman with his briefcase full of brushes. But I never met one.
I don’t remember when I first heard the name, but I do recall the image. Maybe from TV or from reading a newspaper when I was growing up. He apparently walked door to door in suburban neighborhoods – so, that’s why we never saw him – in his neat suit and warm smile. Selling utilitarian brushes to help housewives make their work easier. I grew up in a rural area and they would’ve worn out their shoes trying to visit our houses.
The Fuller Brush Man was on my mind because I came across two letter openers recently while sorting some small items from auction. Both were plastic, one clear and the other a mottled purple. The Fuller Brush Man was carved into the top, his one-button suit coat fastened, his tie and handkerchief neatly pressed and flat. As always, he was carrying his trademark suitcase.
The letter openers, about 7 inches long, looked to be from the 1950s, and had the Fuller logo on the front and Made in U.S.A. on the back. I found several like them on auction sites on the web.
The company has been around since 1906, founded in Nova Scota by a Canadian named Alfred Carl Fuller, according to a 1986 article in American Heritage magazine. He got his first job selling brushes at a company where his father had worked. Fuller learned the importance of nice manners and respectable appearance to get women to buy the brushes. But most of all, he found that the “gotcha” moment occurred when he demonstrated the products.
The company worked like a franchise: The men (not women at that time) paid for their own kits, their own orders and the brushes they gave away, according to the magazine. Early on, they received a 50 percent commission for what they sold, but that was reduced as the company started offering training, supervision and other services.
The brushes were sold practically everywhere and to practically anyone, including John D. Rockefeller and Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson (primarily through their staffs).
No large cadre of Fuller Brush Men go door to door today (who lets a stranger in their house these days?). A Los Angeles Times article from 2009 told of one man who still does: A 90-year-old in Washington state who had been selling for 71 years.
You can buy the products – which include cleaning materials, brushes, brooms, mops and industrial products – on their website, through distributors’ websites and even on QVC.
This was one company that knew how to market. Like me, even if you never saw a Fuller Brush Man you had heard of him. Red Skelton (in photo, above right) was him in the 1948 movie “The Fuller Brush Man.” Lucille Ball played a female version of him in the 1950 movie “The Fuller Brush Girl.”
Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Mutt and Jeff were Fuller Brush Men in some of their cartoon adventures, and he showed up in Dagwood and Blondie. Disney also used him in its Silly Symphony animated shorts: The original “Three Little Pigs” from 1932 was reworked after being criticized for its horrid depiction of the Big Bad Wolf as a Jewish Fuller Brush Man.
Singer/songwriter James McMurty wrote a song in 1995 about him. Philadelphia-born artist Alice Neel painted him in 1965.
How prevalent were black Fuller Brush men? We used brushes, too. I’m sure there must have been plenty who walked the streets in black neighborhoods.
I found references to a few on the web, including businessman J. Bruce Llewelleyn, who owned several media companies. In the book “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: The Enduring Legacies of African-American Families (1994)” by Andrew Billingsley, Llewellyn said his father encouraged him to sell magazines when he was young, and that he sold Fuller brushes. It was his father’s way of directing him to take advantages of the opportunities in this country.
Did you know any of these salesmen? Please send me their stories and your recollections of them.
Postscript: I got an email from a Fuller Brush Woman. Read my Q&A with her.
I recall the FBM from when I was very young, in the late ’50s and early ’60s. For many years, I kept a hairbrush my mother bought from him. The handle was “genuine, make-beliieve mahogany.”
What put the company out of business, I believe, was simply that the products were TOO good– they lasted forever. All our brushes, etc., come from China today. They’re cheaper, and they wear out. Too bad.
Goodby, Fuller Brush Man.
I am the Fuller Brush man who goes door to door, EXCEPT I am female. I also sell Avon. I am in Maine.
Hi Alice. It’s good to hear from a Fuller Brush Woman, and I’m glad to know there are women like you out there. Didn’t know, though, that you folks were still going door to door. Neat.