Strictly Unreliable

Thelma Todd is a lovely lady named Thelma Todd who has been locked out of her boardinghouse for non-payment of rent. She needs her clothes for her vaudeville act. Zasu Pitts is the cleaning lady at the boardinghouse who wants to be a ballerina. Thelma gets her clothes. Zasu gets to go on stage. Complications ensue.

The idea of rubber limbed Ms. Pitts (the prototype for Olive Oyl) attempting ballet is a good one executed badly. (And this is the problem with many shorts -- which were made cheaply and in a hurry) Movie focuses on ZaSu, who cannot carry a movie without material. Thelma is given little to do, except look very pretty.

Stumbled on this one on Turner Classic Movies. It is seriously not worth seeking out, even as an early example of the director who would give us Destry Rides Again.

Strictly Unreliable (1932)

*** (out of 4)

Nice entry in the Zasu/Todd series has Zasu working at a boarding house where Todd has just been kicked out of because of not paying rent. Zasu helps Todd sneak back in to get some clothes that she's going to be wearing at a vaudeville act later that night. That night at the act Zasu finds herself there and accidentally gets on stage where at first she doesn't realize what's going on to just be a play. There's no denying that this Hal Roach short belongs to Zasu because she easily steals every single inch of the thing. The first portion of the film takes place in the boarding house where Zasu spies on a ballet dancer and then tries to do the same moves without any luck. This first portion contains a good number of laughs but the real fun starts during the second part at the vaudeville act. The funniest bit happens when Zasu walks on stage where a man (Billy Gilbert) is fighting with his wife and eventually pulls out a gun and shoots her. Zasu just isn't bring enough to realize this is a couple actors so she goes along with the events. Later she gets caught up in the dance portion of the show and sure enough more issues break out. Zasu is perfect in the part as her comic timing has never been better and she certainly makes the film worth sitting through with her performance alone. Gilbert is hilarious during his brief bit and Bud Jamison does a nice job as the landlady's brother.

Todd really doesn't get too much to do as she's off screen the majority of the time.

When boarding house slavey Zasu Pitts goes to see Thelma Todd's new vaudeville act, she winds up disrupting every performance in the show.

It's one of the Hal Roach 'Girl Friends' series, but Miss Todd doesn't make a serious appearance until three quarters of the way through this two-reel comedy. It's almost all Miss Pitts getting into the sort of awkward situations at which she excelled. Under the direction of George Marshall, who had spent the second half of the 1920s supervising Fox Films' short comedies, it's a fine slapstick performance, abetted by Roach regulars like Charlotte Mineau, Bud Jamison and Billy Gilbert.

Pitts is a maid in a boarding house ("Where artists meet") and Todd is thrown out of her room because she cannot pay the rent even though she has just gotten a gig at the local vaudeville house. After Pitts and Todd retrieve the suitcase of Todd's clothes that the landlady was keeping in lieu of rent, the landlady calls the cops to arrest them for theft. Pitts and Todd make it to the vaudeville house and then Pitts manages to interfere with each of the acts. This short is all about Pitts and she was hilarious in it. Todd has very little to do in this short which is fine since Pitts was the much better comedienne. The scenes at the vaudeville house were the funniest with Pitts interrupting a melodrama, then an acrobatic act and then a dance number. Pitts' comedic timing is as good as anyone's and I especially like the way she talks to herself - always amusing and sometimes laugh out loud funny. No one could say "Oh" like Pitts -it is surely her signature expression along with the facial mannerism when she says it. A top drawer short worthy of repeat viewings.

While I would agree with some of the negative reviews for this short on IMDb, I have a higher tolerance for this sort of entertainment and am rating the film a bit higher. Sure, Ms. Pitts was NOT a comic genius like Laurel and Hardy or even Charlie Chase (other Hal Roach regulars), and Thelma Todd was pretty inconsequential in the film, it still was an entertaining time-passer. Plus, compared to Roach's later leading lady (Patsy Kelly--one of the loudest and more annoying comediennes), Ms. Pitts is very watchable! As far as ZaSu goes, while her attempt at dancing in the beginning of the film is pretty crudely done as well as her ruining the play at the end of the film, it's not any more or less entertaining than if the Three Stooges would have done it. In fact, this entire film is about the same pacing and about as entertaining as a Stooge short. I know this isn't saying a lot (the Stooges were NOT subtle or especially deep), but the film does generate a few laughs and isn't as awful as a Ritz Brothers or Wheeler and Woolsey flick. For fans of early Hollywood comedy, it is well worth seeing but for most others, it's pretty skip-able.