Niagara Falls

This weak little effort doesn't begin to use a fraction of the ability of its two leads, Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts, in no small part because too much of the story concerns the two good-looking but uninteresting juveniles. The picture is one of Roach's one-hour 'streamliners' that he was concentrating on in this period; it took World War Two and contract work to stabilize the studio.

However, the little time they do get together -- in this honeymoon hotel movie -- is time well spent. The two were in ten movies together -- if you don't count ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, where they reshot all of Miss Pitts' scenes with another actress -- and they certainly worked together well. This was their last movie together. A pity they couldn't end on a higher note.

This is some new kind of insanity. They say the story of making some pictures is more interesting than the pictures themselves but how this film ever got packaged like this must be the best story to come out of the post MGM Hal Roach Studio. Now you will find this film listed as 43 minutes and to be sure NIAGARA FALLS (1941) clocks in at 43 minutes and 7 seconds as seen in a copy shown on CUNY TV in New York. When Turner Classics announced a screening of NIAGARA FALLS they put it in a 90 minute slot. I thought that possibly they were planning on filling the time with some of the Zasu Pitts/Thelma Todd two reelers that they'd been showing recently.

I already had a copy of NIAGARA FALLS but out of curiosity I fired up the old VCR and was surprised that when after the credits a whole different picture came on. I did some research and found out that what had happened was that MISS POLLY (1941), also starring Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville, had been shoehorned in. The MISS POLLY portion of the picture is exactly 43 minutes long and the NIAGARA FALLS section lacks only 20 sec. including the titles for a total of 1:25:40. Apparently Hal Roach made these weird running time films he called "streamliners", longer than the longest "shorts" at 20-25 min. but not quite up to the industry standards for a minimum running time for a feature.

They weren't on the same bill, with NIAGARA FALLS released on Oct. 17 1941 and MISS POLLY on Nov. 14. Just when and how and why these films were joined together must be a story. They were both reissued in 1948 by Favorite Films and marketed on DVD by Alpha Video in 2006. There are many DVD's which combine several old B's and programmers but as separate entities so the suspicion is that Favorite did it to market the re-issue as a legitimate feature. They accomplished this very simply. Keeping the original opening and closing titles from NIAGARA FALLS (making everyone who made or appeared in MISS POLLY uncredited) they simply ran MISS POLLY and at the end, (minus the end credits, the missing 20 sec.?) they suddenly fade and resolve to the beginning of NIAGARA FALLS which, curiously enough, is a set up for a flash back, giving this version of NIAGARA FALLS one of the weirdest structures of any film extant. While MISS POLLY ends with Slim Summerville, who is Zasu Pitts handyman, the object of dosed leers from the town prude, NIAGARA FALLS begins with Summerville and Pitts newly married and on the road to Niagara Falls. This "mystery" is something of a tempest in a teapot as both pictures are rehashed bits from the dawn of cinema as Hal Roach never tossed away a gag. For example here's the two people sharing a bathroom who don't know about the other gag.

So this is recommended only for completests, obsessing supporting player fanatics, fans of Slim Summerville and/or Zasu Pitts or the merely curious. Sort of like One Million B.C. sit coms.

First I want to start by saying that Niagara Falls is lovely even in black and white. Zasu Pitts and Slim Somerville play anxious newlyweds Sam and Emmy Sawyer...a farmer and a farmer's daughter who have wanted to marry for twenty years and finally did it. They arrive at the beautiful Niagara Falls misunderstanding a bickering young couple for newlyweds like themselves, Sam gives them their honeymoon suite thinking it will help solve their problems. Not only are the two not married but they don't get along, which they found out on the road where they met over a flat tire.

"Get away from me you wolf! You picked the wrong little red riding hood."

"Why I wouldn't pick you up if I was starving and you were a ham sandwich!"

He is a young bachelor enjoying being young and playing the field..."he who loves and leaves learns to love another day"...and she wants to get married young and have "oodles and oodles of children" with no divorce.

Misunderstandings abound as everyone thinks the young bickering couple is married...Sam goes so far as to lock them in the honeymoon suite together thinking this will help them work out their differences.

This was so great! Good comedy and an underlining love story. It's a short...and I just wanted more!

I was very surprised when I read a few of the reviews for this film, as apparently some time after NIAGARA FALLS was made, someone stupidly combined this film with MISS POLLY. While both are short Hal Roach films and star many of the same actors, combining them is like combining PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE with STAR WARS! Sure, they're both sci-fi films, but other than that there is a huge gap in quality of the two pictures. Bluntly put, NIAGARA FALLS is a cute comedy whereas MISS POLLY is a pile of crap--merging them together must have resulted in a very confusing film indeed! I saw NIAGARA FALLS on Turner Classic Movies and it was shown in its original form--thank goodness. Now I am sure that many will think my score of 9 is way out of line, but I am NOT comparing this film to every other movie--just other short films (such as Roach's "Streamliners") and B-movies. I've actually seen quite a few of these post-Laurel and Hardy films by Roach Studios and this is bar far the funniest and best made of the bunch (and they do vary wildly in quality).

What makes this film so good is the quality of the writing. While MISS POLLY totally missed the mark, here with NIAGARA FALLS everything fell perfectly into place. One way I know it was such a good film is that my teenage daughter who is NOT a lover of old films like me still loved the film. Another way I know how good it was is that we both laughed repeatedly at the film. Sure, sometimes the humor wasn't 100% sophisticated, but it was funny--very, very funny. I particularly loved how outlandish the film became--such as the scenes with the gun and the very end of the film.

As far as the acting goes, it was fine but I don't know why Slim and Zasu got secondary billing--they (particularly Slim Summerville) were great. Zasu was not annoying (something she frequently was in other films) and Slim was like a walking cartoon character.

So if you'd like a good laugh and don't mind that the film is occasionally very silly, watch this movie.

Being a fan of ZaSu Pitts comedies, I thought this one looked like it was worth a try. I was quite disappointed.

(The version I saw was on TCM, but consisted only of the Niagara Falls movie; the Miss Polly movie was absent.) The talents of the actors, who give fine performances, is wasted on one of the stupidest stories I have ever had the misfortune of sitting through.

Tom Brown (Tom Wilson) surprised me by being the strongest actor in the show, but the spotlight is hogged by Slim Summerville (Sam Sawyer), who, if he has any talent, didn't demonstrate it here.

ZaSu Pitts (Elly Sawyer) is great, but doesn't have near big enough a part. The biggest laugh in the movie is when she ends up under Sam under a table.

The only one in the movie who has any sense at all is Tom Wilson. Margie (Marjorie Woodworth) is unreasonable in general. While she is physically quite attractive, her personality and attitudes make her completely undesirable. Elly, Sam, and the hotel desk clerk are just complete fools.

Sam and Elly give up their honeymoon suite in the crowded hotel for Tom and Margie. But then they take it back. Sam ends up imprisoning Tom and Margie in their room. Most of the movie is them trying to break out, but Sam, using a rifle, always puts them back again.

Towards the end comes the worst part. Tom, who is finally about to make good his escape, runs into a minister on a lower floor of the hotel. Now the guy, who, as I said, is the only one in the whole movie who has a head on his shoulders, suddenly, for absolutely no reason at all, decides he has to marry Margie!

He drags the minister up to the room he has just escaped from, but Margie doesn't want to marry him. He gives her a kiss, and now, after one kiss, she feels compelled to marry him.

Finally, Sam has the nerve to say to Tom, "You deceived me," when practically the only line Tom had to Sam earlier was, "We're not married," to which Sam replied, "You think I'd believe that?"

Idiotic.