Abbott and Costello in "Little Giant" (1946)

At his mother's farm in Cucamonga, California, good-hearted naïve country bumpkin Benny Miller (Lou Costello) courts the girl next door whom he hopes to someday marry, Martha Hill (Elena Verdugo), while taking a correspondence course on salesmanship techniques. Although his techniques find little success with the farm's customers, Benny nonetheless is awarded a diploma by mail, and goes to Los Angeles to ask his uncle, Clarence Goodring (George Cleveland), an accountant at the Hercules Vacuum Cleaner Company, to secure him a job. Uncle Clarence suggests that they pretend to be unrelated, in order to circumvent the firm's policy against hiring relatives of employees. Hercules' general manager, E. L. Morrison (Bud Abbott), mistakes Benny for a model and asks him to undress. Morrison's secret wife, Hazel Temple (Jacqueline deWit), discovers the mistake and suggests that Benny be hired to avoid an accounting scandal, as they have been "cooking the books."

On his first day, Benny does so much damage to a customer's carpet that he costs the company money, and is fired. Uncle Charles, however, offers his nephew a chance to work under his friend Tom Chandler (Bud Abbott), who is Morrison's cousin and manager of the company's Stockton, California branch. There, Benny learns that Tom hates Morrison, who has used the "no relatives" rule to banish him to Stockton, and sets impossible sales goals for the branch.

After Benny somehow proves that seven times thirteen equals twenty-eight, Tom hires him, but he continues to do poor business over the next weeks. On the day that the company's president, P. S. Van Loon (Pierre Watkin), announces a contest in which the best salesman will earn ten thousand dollars, Tom tells his secretary, Miss Ruby Burke (Brenda Joyce), to fire Benny. Unwilling to tell him, she instead brings him to a bar, where the company's other salesmen play a prank on him. His new coworkers convince him that he can read minds. Now confident in his psychic abilities, Benny rushes out and breaks all selling records. Van Loon is thrilled with him, and invites him back to Los Angeles for a board meeting that evening.

Upon Benny's arrival, Uncle Charles tells him that Morrison has been embezzling, and when Benny later gives a mind-reading demonstration for Morrison and Van Loon, he hints at this. Morrison immediately has his wife, Hazel, seduce Benny and learn his secrets. Hazel's attempt fails, however, and although she manages to sicken Benny with sweets and cigars, he accidentally drops the sleeping pill she tries to slip him into her own drink, and both fall asleep in her bedroom.

Meanwhile, Martha visits the company and, after hearing that Benny is with Hazel, races to Hazel's apartment, where she finds them in bed and assumes they are having an affair. Soon after, Morrison enters and shares her suspicions. That night, while Benny tries to reconcile with Martha, Morrison brings Ruby to the board meeting to explain that Benny's psychic abilities are fake. When Benny arrives, he hears the board laughing at him and returns home, ashamed. At his door, however, Martha greets him with a hug, and Van Loon, Tom, Ruby and Uncle Charles are waiting to inform him that they still believe that he is a great salesman, when he has confidence. Van Loon awards him the accolade of "Hercules' Salesman of the Year, a job running the company's Cucamonga branch, as well as the ten thousand dollar check, which allows Benny to ask Martha to marry him.

A 1946 American romantic comedy drama film (released in the United Kingdom as "On the Carpet") directed by William A. Seiter, produced by Joe Gershenson, screenplay by Walter DeLeon, story by Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins, cinematography by Charles Van Enger, starring the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Brenda Joyce, Jacqueline deWit, George Cleveland, and Margaret Dumont. Distributed by Universal Pictures.

Categorized as the first of two split-up partnerships of the popular comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, this film was regarded as a major departure for them. It was the first Abbott and Costello feature in which they did not play a team, their first situation comedy, and the comedy was character/situation-driven rather than gag-driven.

Abbott and Costello perform the 7x13=28 routine, where Costello attempts to prove to Abbott that 7 times 13 equals 28, 28 divided by 7 equals 13, and seven 13's added together equals 28.

When Lou Costello is mistaken for a male model and forced to strip, there is a very visible bandage on his right arm; that was to mask the bracelet containing the name of his baby son, who died in 1943, which the comic had welded closed so it could never be removed.

William A. Seiter had previously directed The Marx Brothers and was able to get Margaret Dumont to do a cameo as one of Benny's intended customers.

Censors wouldn't let Lou Costello utter his famous catchphrase "I'm a bad boy!" after he wakes up in Hazel's bedroom.