So's Your Aunt Emma!

Zasu Pitts plays Emma--a spinster who lives with her very legalistic and sexless sisters. Despite this, Emma is a pretty nice old lady--sheltered but sweet. One days she's reading about a young boxer who just happens to be the son of an old boyfriend--a boxer of whom her nasty sisters did not approve decades earlier. On a lark, Emma decides to head to the city to watch the guy fight.

Once in town, she sees that the young boxer is not at all focused and is a bit of a weenie. Emma decides to stick around and give him a bit of advice. However, some gangsters see her and think she's the dreaded 'Ma Parker' (a takeoff on Ma Barker of gangster fame from the 1930s). And, though a series of mistakes, she's caught up the middle of a murder and the police think she might be responsible! Oddly, however, instead of running from this mistaken identity, Emma decides to play it up to the hilt and pretend to actually be Ma Parker! Why, in order to infiltrate the mob and discover where the young boxer is--as he was just kidnapped.

All in all, a crazy and unbelievable sort of plot but it was made enjoyable by Pitts' sweet character. Despite being a B-film from a third-rate studio (Monogram), it's a very enjoyable little comedy mixed with a bit of film noir. Not great--but certainly a lot better than you'd expect.

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.

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. "

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.