So's Your Aunt Emma!

It helps enormously if you're a big fan of Zasu Pitts before you tune in to So's You're Aunt Emma. She's the whole show in this film or as she put it, the big cheese in this rat trap.

Fluttery spinster Pitts decides to take a trip to New York from her little town to see Bud McTaggart fight in a preliminary bout at the Garden. She was involved back in the day with his father and Bud could have been her kid.

But once Pitts hits the umbrella she constantly carries makes her mistaken for the notorious Ma Parker known to carry a rod in that umbrella and known to shoot fast and deadly. Pitts gets involved in a gang war with racketeers Tris Coffin and Douglas Fowley and she also helps reporter Roger Pryor who befriends her gain the scoop of the year.

I have to say Pitts is really especially after being schooled by Pryor she picks up all the gangster lingo.

So's Your Aunt Emma is funny in spots, but you'd better be a fan of Zasu Pitts.

Aunt emma (zasu pitts) gets caught up in a fight fixing mess when she's mistaken for the leader of a gang. She gets rough and tough to catch the crooks, even though she's a prim and proper young lady. It's all pretty over the top, and that's the running gag. And the city editor fires the one guy that has the whole story. It's okay. Emma saves the day, but the last twenty minutes were shot in the dark, so we never really see what happens. Pretty annoying. And right at the end, it sounds like one of the lines is dubbed out, so we don't even hear the punch line for what the old lady said. Even the captions couldn't catch it. More annoying. Keep an eye out for dick elliott.. he was the mayor in andy griffith. Directed by jean yarbrough. He had worked with kings of comedy hal roach and abbott and costello. Story by harry hervey. Pitts had started in the early silents, and made a zillion talkies, but was probably best known for mad, mad world. Bud mctaggart died young at age 39 in a swimming pool accident.

I wasn't expecting entertwined sub-plots in such a short (just over an hour) comedy. Zasu Pitts is delightful in her portrayal as Aunt Emma. I would watch it again, which is part of my rating it so high-it got an extra star from me for that.

One day they may clean up the picture but when you get into the story, the bad copy may just add that 1942 ambiance.

A spinster known as Aunt Emma (Zazu Pitts) to her friends missed her chance to marry a prizefighter. However, after his death, she takes a chance to help his son to become a great fighter. She travels from a small Midwest town to the big city. There in her efforts to help him, she crosses paths with several criminal types. They spot her umbrella and mistake her for the guntote'n Ma Parker criminal type. Soon the bad guys are being dispatched like flies. Maybe she is Ma Parker. Let us watch and see who is next.

Allowances made to poverty row productions; this is really fun. I'm saddened by a recent read that many aged under 20 have never watched a b&w film. They'll never know the charm of, " Go on, take a powder. "