Traveling Saleslady

1935 "Those Gold Diggers are back again!"
6.7| 1h3m| NR| en
Details

A toothpaste magnate's mischievous daughter, tired of her father's traditional ways of conducting business, joins forces with her father's rival and a crazy inventor. Together they create "Cocktail Toothpaste". The new concoction tastes like whiskey in the morning, a martini at suppertime, and champagne at night.

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WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
mark.waltz Twitchell's toothpaste is in an uproar....There's a new flavor in town, and it's dropping Twitchell's sales like gangbusters. The reason? The breath freshener is flavored with cocktails! Yes, you can get rid of the onion smell from your morning omelet by covering it up with the smell of various cocktails. Prohibition is over, so anything goes, I guess, and guess who the sales lady is: Old man Twitchell's own daughter (Joan Blondell) who is furious with papa for not giving her a job. The old sexist (Grant Mitchell) doesn't believe that women belong in business, and Joan is out to prove dad wrong. While on the road, she meets Twitchell salesman William Gargan who is her rival by day, but after 8, business no longer matters, well so they tell each other.Then, there's drug store owner Glenda Farrell who earlier turned down the cocktail toothpaste and finds that Twitchell's is collecting dust on her shelves. It all culminates in Chicago at the latest drug store convention where rivals Blondell and Farrell go to to toe over Gargan with wacky inventor Hugh Herbert befuddled over all the toothpaste intrigue going on underneath his "woo-woo" spouting lips. Behind the scenes, Mrs. Twitchell (a delightful Ruth Donnelly making more out of a small part than what was originally there) encourages her daughter to give Mitchell the run for his money, something she's wanted to do for years.Of course, alcoholic toothpaste is in the minds of the writers, certainly not reality, and this really pushes the new production code to its maximum level. Still, even with the code on the script's tail, it's pretty raunchy stuff, with some hidden sexual innuendo adding a lot of fun to the fast-moving script. It's also fun, in this pre-women's lib era, to watch Blondell winning at every turn, and to see smug Gargan getting his from both the women in his life. Some fun character performances from Al Shean, Bert Roach, and an unbilled Hattie McDaniel add to the sparkle of this post-code comedy that almost seems like pre-code with a few elements that slipped by Mr. Hays' big ears.
MartinHafer Angela Twitchell (Joan Blondell) is the daughter of a rich owner of the country's biggest-selling toothpaste. Her father, unfortunately, is a bit of a blow-hard and refuses to let her have any involvement with the company because 'it's men's work'! When a goofy inventor (Hugh Herbert) also finds himself frustrated with her father because he won't even talk to him about his invention, he shows it to Blondell and she is VERY impressed. You see, instead of antiseptic tasting paste, he's come up with flavors that taste like booze. She sees a great future for the products but since her father won't talk business with her at all, she takes the idea to one of his competitors and she is hired as a saleslady on the spot.During the course of her cross-country travels, she is VERY successful and soon the tiny company she works for is putting her Dad's out of business. But, because she's using a false name, he has no idea she's the brains behind this turnaround. Along the way, she meets a salesman for Twitchell's (William Gargan) and although they are bitter rivals, their is a romantic spark between them. Can Blondell manage to make everyone happy AND get the guy? The film is quite charming and enjoyable. Sure, it's not especially deep, but the excellent writing and acting make this one to see. Clever.Oh, and by the way, though the scene on the telephone is very short, that's Hattie McDaniel in this cameo.
Kittyman Nowadays movies portray business-persons as greedy, twisted, conspiratorial individuals. In the thirties, however, they generally were seen as at least useful, if not heroic. And perhaps I'm anachronistic, but that's still the way I think things really are.In this quasi-feminist film, the wonderful Joan Blondell seizes upon an inventor's idea for liquor flavored toothpaste. (Indeed, if you Google that term you'll find such a product actually exists today.) When her knuckle-headed father won't sell it through his company, however, she finds a way around him, and cuts a pseudonymous deal with his more foresighted rival.Then great fun results as she, the opposition's chief salesperson, and William Gargan, her father's chief salesman, try to constantly double-cross each other on-the-job, while falling for each other off-the-job.The picture's pace is swift, the dialog snappy, and the plot has no holes. I highly recommend it, and have only three caveats: 1. The script overlooks what I believe would have been "cocktail" toothpaste's greatest selling point—that of deniability. Neither your boss nor your spouse could ever prove you were drinking 'cause you could always claim they just smelled the toothpaste.2. While Gargan does a fine job with his role, his part itself has Jimmy Cagney written all over it. Had Cagney been Joan's opposition, "Traveling Saleslady" probably would have been considered a classic.3. Finally, I say quasi-feminist film because; at very end Joan, who clearly is the smartest person, and the best business mind in the picture reconciles with Gargan by telling him she wants to go to Niagra Falls and cook for him thereafter. What really should have happened, however, is this: she should have said "I want to go to Niagara Falls with you (a smiling reaction by Gargan) before taking over as your boss (a stunned Gargan promptly collapses to the floor in a faint)."
David (Handlinghandel) The character played by Joan Blondell wants to make it in a man's world and boy, does she! Her pompous father tells her women don't belong in business when she asks for a job -- any job. So she goes to work for his rival. And work she does! Her father is a stuffy toothpaste manufacturer. She hooks up with dizzy inventor Hugh Herbert and comes up with a plan to revolutionize the world of toothpaste. And she leases her and Herbert's services to her father's rival for a year. And then she goes to work in the title capacity.William Gargan is likable as the salesman who is both her romantic interest and her rival. (He works for her father's company. Needless to say, she is not using her real name; so to him, she is The Enemy.) It is far from a masterpiece. But Blondell is always a delight and it's a brassy, entertaining story.