One Track Minds

Very funny short comedy completely taking place aboard train. The girls (Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts) are on their way by train to Hollywood for Thelma's big screen test where she must try to impress "Director Von Sternheim", star maker of the Roaring Lion Studios. Soon havoc comes on board via a hard of hearing man on his way to the fair with a suitcase full of his "prize bees", a toy airplane, and none other than Director Von Sternheim himself, who "desiring the view", demands the girls give up their seats to him, starting them off on the wrong foot with the man they unknowingly must later impress.

This film is laugh out loud funny, with lots of the usual train board slapstick you would expect (yes, even the "loose" toupee gag). Especially good is the right on target, very amusing impersonation of Eric von Stroheim, complete with monocle, beret, plus on-the-mark accent and personality. Watch for several regular Roach Studio actors in this short including Billy Gilbert as the train conductor and Our Gang's Spanky McFarland, at the peak of his cuteness, as Zasu's little brother. A very fun, comical short.

One Track Minds (1933)

** (out of 4)

Thelma Todd wins a contest that sends her out to Hollywood where she'll be given a screen test by the Roaring Lion Studios. Zasu Pitts comes along on the train ride and sure enough chaos follows and especially after a crazed director named Von Sternheim gets on board. This short tries to be a spoof of Hollywood but the majority of the jokes are rather lame and with the exception of a redneck nothing here is overly funny. The majority of the running time has the girls arguing with various people including the director as well as the train conductor who just happens to be played by Billy Gilbert. The early stuff dealing with Zasu starting trouble isn't very funny and the "apperance" of George 'Spanky' McFarland just doesn't add any laughs. There are a couple shots at so-called actresses coming to Hollywood but none of them are that funny and even the crazed director throws a few shots at Todd but again, they're simply not funny. The second portion of the film has a redneck played by Jack Clifford getting on board. The guy brings his trained bees and he also has a major hearing problem and I must admit that his entire act made me laugh. Clifford clearly steals the show as he's the only one who gets any laughs. It should go without saying but at the very end the bees get loose and cause trouble and the special effects used here are more embarrassing than the "dots" that would be used decades later for THE SWARM.

Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd made about a dozen and a half comedy shorts as a team. For the most part, they were an amazingly unfunny lot of Hal Roach films....with flat scripts, little in the way of plots and few laughs. This is the last of these films and following this flat film, the studio realized it needed to do something to improve these shorts...so they substituted Patsy Kelly for Zasu in future shorts. Unfortunately, Thelma Todd died in 1935...and Patsy's new partner ended up dying a short time later! After these many cast changes, Roach decided to abandon the series...which, overall, was probably a good idea as they represented the studio's worst films (apart, possibly from their Boy Friends series).

Here in "One Track Minds" the pair are given better support than usual, with Sterling Holloway, Billy Gilbert and Spanky McFarland in supporting roles. The pair are heading to Hollywood, as Thelma has an upcoming screen test. Along the way, they meet up with a selfish German director as well as a deaf bee keeper.

So is it any good? Once again, no. The situation and what they do with it provides little in the way of laughs. A sad film that I wanted to like but which just felt like a third-string effort.