April Antics: Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts

This month we are watching short comedies. For our first foray, we turn the focus to a trio of shorts featuring the short-lived comedy team of Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd.

Pajama Party (1931)

RODNEY BOWCOCK: Zasu and Thelma are dating a couple of band members (including singer Donald Novis) and enroute to meet them get run off the road into a lake (one of those sorts of things that are always around in Hal Roach shorts. They are just slightly less populous than six-foot-deep potholes full of water) by a wacky heiress, Mrs. Van Dyke (Elizabeth Baroness). She feels pity on the girls and invites them to her home for a birthday party. This leads to a series of “fish out of water” antics as Thelma is chased around by every man at the party and Zasu struggles to adapt to the social mores of the wacky eccentrics at the party.

SAMANTHA GLASSER: The girls sit in the car submerged in water, giving up and stiffy, accepting their fate but simmering under the surface in a way that Edgar Kennedy often did.

The reckless driver’s house is an art deco masterpiece complete with ornately tiled bathrooms, a grand eye-popping staircase and a lush living room space.

RB: Of course, Billy Gilbert, Eddie Dunn and Charlie Hall show up in uncredited roles and the film chugs along with the delightful Leroy Shield music.

SG: Hal Roach himself directed the short. There are quite a few good laughs, like the reveal of Zasu’s bloomers and then the maid’s own underthings. The final joke puts a nice point on a pleasant short.

RB: Roach was a capable director, but a not particularly great story man. An awful lot of this short seems to trade on this weird thing that I often see in Roach shorts where the humor is just basically saying “Aren’t rich people crazy?” with a wink and a nod at the screen.

SG: Yes, that seemed to be a theme in shorts from this era. I suppose we have our fair share of that sentiment in dramas today. The Film Daily wrote, “There are many laughs due mostly to Miss Pitts’ unique style of droll delivery… There is much tomfoolery and slapstick stuff which results in a moderate number of laughs, the biggest coming when Zasu tries to understand a French maid who insists on undressing her.”

RB: This series is pretty uneven overall, but this was a pretty good entry in the series. Three stars.

SG: Four stars for the opulent set alone.

Red Noses (1932)

RB: Originally called The Sniffles, this time around, the Girls are in bed with colds, but that just won’t do as they’re required to be at work and their salary and a bonus (even more important in depression era America) are on the line. The boss has a solution though! He’ll send them to a wellness facility to have the colds exercised out of them.

SG: Making women who can't breathe do rigorous physical activities seems akin to throwing leeches on an ailing man in the 1800s. In today's era when workers decry their employer’s insistence that they return to the office, this boss seems especially brutal when he shouts, “We’ll get ‘em here if they have appendicitis and four broken legs.”

RB: Sure, why not? Naturally, this leads to the obligatory series of gags, not unlike the ones that we had previously seen in Pajama Party. Zasu just can’t acclimate to anything different from what she’s used to, and while Thelma is more willing to try, she gets caught up in a series of mishaps as well.

SG: The casting is very good. Blanche Payson is the brutal physical therapist who leads the charge to manhandle the girls. I knew her as the abusive step-mother to Wheezer and Dorothy in Dogs is Dogs. Columbus-area Sons of the Desert also recently saw her for a few seconds playing Mrs. Hardy in Helpmates.

The rough treatment seems to have been somewhat genuine. Zasu is sporting several rather large bruises on her legs.

RB: Yeah, I noticed that too!

SG: It is really no wonder that this short has a high rating online. The vibration machine features Thelma Todd in a white shirt with no bra bouncing around on a vibration machine and later running on a treadmill.

The Paramount Theatre in Wyoming, Illinois got a bad print, but anyway it, “seemed to please. Got a number of good laughs.”

Motion Picture Herald said the plot, “has been done on more than one occasion in the past. James Horne, directing, tried for the maximum laughs, but they were not very frequent.”

Motion Picture magazine called the film, “rough, but funny.”

We know as soon as the setting is established what kind of gags we are in for, but they’re performed well and evoke easy laughs. Four stars.

RB: Some of the gags are milked a little bit long here, but Horne handles the direction better than Roach did in the last short that we screened. Thelma and Zasu again have wonderful chemistry, but some of the slapstick gags involving Zasu come across as more painful and uncomfortable than funny. I guess in this case, they really were. Three stars.

Maids A La Mode (1933)

RB: Well, here we go again. Zasu and Thelma are models this time out at the dress shop of Von Smaltz (Billy Gilbert), a high-class fashion designer. After an amusing routine involving a conveyor belt and the dog (Laughing Gravy) of some of his high class clients, Von Smaltz promptly fires them, then rehires them to deliver some dresses to a client. While on the way to deliver the package, the girls run into an old friend, Andre (Leo White) who invites them to a party at his house. Having nothing else to wear, our heroes borrow the dresses that they were to deliver to go to the party.

SG: Thelma Todd is a lovely woman, but the wedding dress she is meant to be modeling makes her look like a nun.

RB: Yes, it’s completely ridiculous.

SG: Laughing Gravy is not a fancy dog, and he looks uncomfortable being carried around like Pekingese with a bow around his neck. I loved seeing that cute little mutt, though. He is always a welcome sight.

A welcome melody that can be heard when the couples are dancing is, “Ain’t No Sin (To Take Off Your Skin.”

RB: I was surprised to hear that as opposed to a stock Leroy Shield tune, but I would’ve liked that a lot as well.

SG: Thelma Todd is a great reactor, and you can catch her doing a wonderful double take in this film.

RB: Not taking away from the co-stars, but it really needs to be noted that Thelma was just a fantastic comedy actress all around. She really brings so much to the proceedings whenever she appears in a comedy. She did want to branch out and do more dramatic roles, but it’s astounding how much fun she is in a comedy.

SG: It was strange to see the clay sculptures being animated, because it didn’t really add to the comedy, but it was cool to see. The visual of Zasu swinging from the curtains with an outrageous mask on got a hearty laugh from me.

RB: That sculpture gag was such a throwaway, and likely wasn’t cheap, which was even more strange when there are so many process shots in these films.

SG: D.E. Fetton of the Lyric Theatre in Harrison, Arkansas said, “Believe this is as good as any this team had made. And they have been consistently good all the time.”

William Crute of the Victoria Theatre in Vancouver disagreed, calling this, “A fair comedy, but I’ve seen better Pitts and Todd comedies than this one.”

Bert Silver of the Silver Family Theatre in Greenville, Michigan said, “Slapstick in the worst way. They are funny and go farther for a laugh then any other team.”

A.J. Simmons of the Plaza Theatre in Lamar, Missouri called the short, “Just another 18-minute view of Todd’s lingerie and Pitts’ trying her best to be funny. Not much to it. I don’t blame Zasu for quitting these kind of comedies she had to make.” She would only make two more shorts with Todd before Patsy Kelly became her new teammate.

They went for a few unusual laughs in this one. Four stars.

RB: Sometimes when I read those contemporary reviews, I wonder if we had seen the same film. I can’t imagine ever complaining about seeing Thelma in lingerie, and the fact that aside from that this was a fun comedy, deftly directed by Gus Meins makes it that much better. This was the best of the three films for me. I agree with your assessment of four stars.