Silver Screenings

Our latest binge-watching obsession is a female comedy team from the early 1930s.

Comedic actresses ZaSu* Pitts and Thelma Todd made 17 comedic shorts between 1931-1933, drawing on a popular theme of the day: Women making a Life in the Big City.

Pitts and Todd, friends on screen and off, played resourceful young women who Made the Most of their working class lives.

Their Pre-Code shorts run between 18 and 25 minutes each, and are mini screwball comedies about the quagmire of single women’s lives.

Film historian Jeanine Basinger calls their films situational comedies; indeed, they almost seem a precursor to television sitcoms. “Episodes” include a trip to Coney Island, an ill-fated hospital visit, an evening at a wrestling event, and a day at a nightmarish health spa.

The physical comedy is broad (so to speak), but it’s done well; Pitts and Todd have remarkable dexterity and timing.

For example, in one scene in Let’s Do Things (1931), Pitts and Todd are getting ready for a glam night on the town. Pitts enters the room, dressed in her gown.

Pitts: “How do I look?”
Todd: “You look fine, just fine.”
Pitts: “Does anything show?”
Todd: (wearily) “Not a thing.”

MGM – jokingly referred to in one short as “Roaring Lion Studios” – produced the shorts with Hal Roach, creator of the Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy shorts.

“Hal Roach, the legendary producer who teamed up Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, envisioned Todd and Pitts as a female equivalent to his marquee stars,” explains Donald Liebenson in Vanity Fair.¹

There was a time when Roach could do no wrong, and he knew Pitts and Todd would have marvelous screen chemistry. Pitts’s character is delicate and shy, while Todd is assertive and bold.

The acting feels modern. Todd’s Suffer-No-Fools personae is a magnificent foil to Pitts’ desperate martyrdom.

Yet, the source of their perils is never their friendship. They’re in it together, Thick or Thin.

Pitts and Todd were both seasoned Hollywood performers by the time Hal Roach paired them in 1931.

Pitts was a well-known character actress by the 1930s, having made a career in silent film comedies. Todd (a.k.a. Miss Massachusetts 1925) was shipped to Hollywood by a talent scout in the mid 1920s, where she was cast in supporting comedic roles.

Their films were made a lo-o-ong time ago, which begs the question: Do these two comediennes matter today?

You bet they do. Sure, the hair and clothes are from another century – and look it – but their performances and friendship have a timeless quality.

Also: The ludicrous situations in which they find themselves are uniquely tailored to women.

“The American woman on film is really a pretty active person,” says Basinger, “unless she is just stooging it in a male genre. Things have to happen to them, and they have to react. These shorts reflect that very clearly.”²

Plus, they’re just plain fun. We’re spared psychological analyses and examinations of motives. We expect to get immediately to the Business at Hand, which is Pitts and Todd delivering the laughs.

Why were there only 17 short films?

Pitts left the Hal Roach Studios in 1933 to pursue other projects. Todd remained, and was paired with another actress, Patsy Kelly, and together they made 21 shorts.

But Thelma Todd’s career ended suddenly, at age 29, when she was found dead in her vehicle. The cause of death was listed as accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, although many speculated it might have been Murder. (There were rumors Todd had sustained bruises and a broken nose immediately before her death; however, the surgeon who conducted the autopsy testified he found no signs of violence or injury.³)

As for ZaSu Pitts, she continued to appear in films, television, and radio until the early 1960s. Her last film appearance was It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World in 1963. She died of cancer that same year, at the age of 69.

We don’t hear much about Pitts and Todd these days, which is a shame considering how popular they were in the early 1930s. As Variety pointed out in 1933, silent movie actors fared better in Hollywood than stage actors, and almost no one fared better than this comedic pair.

“Topping the list for appearing in the most pictures of Hays’ office members, including both features and shorts,” reads the article, “is ZaSu Pitts, who was in 43 films during [the past] four-year period. Her teammate, Thelma Todd, is second with 39.”⁴

We cannot recommend their shorts highly enough. Admittedly, some films are better than others, but you can’t help but admire these two funny women who continue to entertain, nearly 100 years later.

*ZaSu, pronounced “Zay-zoo”, is a name derived from her older sisters’ names, Eliza and Susan.

Sources

¹Vanity Fair. (Retrieved October 17, 2024.) Classic Hollywood’s Greatest Female Comedy Team Still Packs a Punch, by Donald Liebenson.
²Ibid.
³Wikipedia. (Retrieved November 7, 2024.) Thelma Todd.
⁴Variety. (Retrieved November 7, 2024.) Who’s Grabbin’ the Jobs.