Travesuras de una solterona

This Hal Roach comedy is the story of two sisters in their small town. One is widow Kathleen Howard who's an old battle axe and runs the town's Purity League, the unofficial legislative body of the place. She's passed a series of navy blue laws and gets them enforced. Among other things it's preventing her daughter Elyse Knox from having a love life.

The other is spinster Zasu Pitts who lives next door and would like to help her niece. Pitts is aided and abetted by her handyman and Rube Goldberg type inventor Slim Summerville.

Pitts in the title rolle of Miss Polly is her usual fluttery self. But the real dominating force of the film is Howard. Howard is best remembered as being the haridden who married W.C. Fields in You're Telling Me and It's A Gift.. She's got the same kind of role here.

Nice comedy from the Hal Roach Studios with a good cast of rustic Hollywood players.

I first encountered Zasu Pitts as "Trina" in Erich von Stroheim's GREED (1924), but this is not that. Here, she's Miss Pandora Polly, a lady with a big heart and a youthful spirit. Instead of GREED, what we have is a small town being terrorized by a stereotypical "upright and uptight guild." They've literally taken over the town, reducing the mayor to a pawn and passing all sorts of weird ordinances which proscribe amorous or even friendly contact between unmarried youths of the opposite sex. Zasu won't have any of this, and she takes steps to put the town right.

MISS POLLY is a story with one side to root for, the other against. The laughs are plenty, many coming from Slim Summerville as Slim Witkins, Polly's inventor friend. The only sane character in this movie, except for the soon-to-retire mailman, is Zasu's friend (or maid), Patsy (Brenda Forbes), who plays a delightful "straight-man" to Summerville's eccentricity.

It's only 45 minutes long, and it's a delight, especially if you enjoy observing the hypocrites getting their comeuppance.

Uggghhh! Considering this was a Hal Roach production (the same genius responsible for pairing Laurel with Hardy and creating Harold Lloyd and Charley Chase), this SHOULD have been a lot better and at least funny! Instead, it's a film full of very broad and tired-looking situations. Anchoring this film is Zasu Pitts. Her humor is often pretty grating and unfunny, though she is an excellent supporting actress. Placing her at the center of all this was not, in hindsight, a good idea. And the humor seemed catered to a very undemanding audience (such as kids and those who thought I DREAM OF JEANIE was a great show), so there was no subtlety or finesse to the script, direction or performances. For example, the behaviors of Pitts after she drank the "magic tonic" was just awful and uninspired.

All this is a real shame, as the film began very well and COULD have been good. In a fictional small town, a large group of nasty old prunes have seized control of the government and have determined to eliminate ANYTHING that smacks of fun!! Believe me, I have known people just like this and taking jabs at these "holier-than-thou" hypocrites is a great idea. Too bad the execution left so much to be desired.

Miss Polly (1941)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Rather flat comedy has Zasu Pitts playing the title character, a free spirited woman in a very conservative town, which is being ruined by a woman who demands that everyone live the type of lifestyle she sees fit. This here leads to a town where everyone is expecting to follow her "rules but Miss Polly has plans of her own. MISS POLLY could have made for a very funny movie but sadly it's really a complete disaster from start to finish and thankfully the thing only lasts 45-minutes or else it would probably be much worse. There are all sorts of problems with this thing but it really does seem that no one involved even tried to make something fresh or original and instead they just threw a bunch of scenes together without every attempting to make them better. We're really left with a movie that has very little going for it because everything is just so uneven and forced that you really do wonder what anyone was thinking. The old woman who demands that everyone follow her rules is so annoying that you can't help but hate her and really be turned off by her. This isn't good for a comedy that is supposed to be making you laugh. Instead of laughing you just grow extremely hot and frustrated by how annoying the character is. The actors give it their all and you can tell they're trying but it's all for nothing.

The antics fly fast and furious in the first part, from a wacko machine that mows down hedges, smokes through houses, and even shoots out crawl ropes to hang from. Then it's on to wacky crowds, all humorously rushing, pushing, and mugging it up. All in all, it's a comical barrage of goofy wild antics.

But what's Miss. Polly to do. Nasty old Mrs. Snodgrass and her blue-nose Purity League forbid young love. So youthful Eddie and Barbara have to sneak around while sympathetic Polly helps them out. Now, if only goofy inventor Slim could control his machines, maybe young love might succeed after all.

For me, that first part was a load of chuckles. However, the last part where Polly imbibes a hidden love potion and gets suddenly aggressive does spread it on pretty thick, especially when Polly challenges Snodgrass and the League in her royal-like gown and exposes the amorous skeletons lurking in the members' well hidden closet.

Thus, I can see why moral consevatives might object since the burlesque is so unrelenting and totalizing. But I take it not so much as an attack on moral conservatism, but instead as a warning against possible extremist tendencies, especially in small towns like Polly's.

All in all, give the brief 44-minutes a try, especially the first part. You don't have to be an advocate of free love to get some chuckles.

(In Passing, I suspect there's an interesting backstory here, coming as the flick does on the verge of WWII. So see what you think.)