Red Noses

Have not seen this in a long time but my memory is that it is not as funny as it could be. Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts go to a Turkish bath where they endure various craziness including being attacked by two women with vibrators. In the end, having lost their clothes, they escape together arm in arm with Thelma in a sheet and Zasu wearing a man's suit.

Important day at work, but the girls (Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts) are home sick in a double bed with bad colds (and a bedroom full of used tissues and "bed pan"). The boss decides to send them to a Turkish Bath to be cured (Zasu: "No Turk's gonna give ME a bath!"). Soon they are being given quack treatments and riding on absurd "exercise" contraptions, assisted by a staff of platinum blondes and a big, beefy brunette - all uniformed in tank tops and tight-fitting satin shorts.

This short comedy is a hoot! With the usual assortment of comical Hal Roach Studios character actors and stock background music, plus lots of funny slapstick humor, this had me laughing out loud - plus everyone looked like they were having a real fun time making this. I really like the chemistry and camaraderie between Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts - they work well off of each other. A fun short.

Red Noses (1932)

** (out of 4)

Hal Roach comedy has Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd playing friends unable to go to work because both of them have a cold. Their boss desperately needs them so he sends the duo to a Turkish bath to get over their colds but of course they end up doing more damage. Roach did all sorts of comedy teams with the most famous being Laurel and Hardy but it's interesting that he would team Todd up with so many people. I'm not sure if he was just using her to make others funny or if he just couldn't settle on an appropriate team for her but I've never been all that thrilled with the Pitts-Todd shorts I've seen. This one here has a rather interesting set up but sadly there aren't too many laughs and in the end it becomes a real chore to try and sit through the 23-minutes. I think the biggest problem is that there's simply nothing funny here. We get silliness of the two girls getting too rough of a workout and then we have a very unfunny sequence where the girls are told to get undressed and Pitts is too shy to do so. I think the final gag of the film is a pretty good one when Pitts puts on the clothes of a man and naturally all the women begin to freak out. Pitts isn't too bad in the part and I'd say Todd is pretty good as well but the screenplay doesn't do them any favors.

Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd were a third-tier comedy team from Hal Roach Studios--the same folks who were responsible for Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, Charley Chase and many of Harold Lloyd's films. My assumption is that because so much effort was expended in making these great comedies that there simply wasn't anything left for these girl comedies. Mostly the films consist of Zasu simpering like Olive Oyl and Thelma just standing around watching! Apparently the formula didn't work well and eventually the studio replaced Zasu with Patsy Kelly and all this really did was make the films louder--not better.

In this installment, the ladies are sick in bed and can't go to work. However, the boss really needs them so he pays for them to go to a health spa to help them get over their colds and return to their jobs. The entirety of the film consists of them being pummeled and prodded by Amazons who seemed more interested in inflicting pain than anything else. Some of it's funny...but most isn't--especially the horribly bad use of rear projection near the end. Clearly this is the case of a film where a concept was generated but nothing else. Not terrible and probably among the team's best...and that's a real shame.

By the way, when this was recently shown on TCM, I noticed that the sound was terrible and was greatly in need of restoration. You also might notice that the music was the same music used in Laurel & Hardy shorts--something that was true of all their films.