So's Your Aunt Emma!

More and more lately, I've been seeing films made during the 30s and 40s by the poverty row studios that I find to be competently made and enjoyable, and this one is no exception. Zasu Pitts really shines as Aunt Emma, who befriends the boxer son of her former boxer beau. There are a good bunch of character actors which you will recognize like Warren Hymer and Dick Elliot (The mayor in the early "Andy Griffith Show".) But this is Zasu's show all the way as she battles gangsters and stuffy sisters. Monogram made this and you will recognize the music over the main titles as the same heard in "Let's Go Collegiate" and "Freckles Comes Home". This seems to be an unofficial theme song for the Monogram comedies of the period. I saw this streaming on YouTube complete in one download, and the quality was good, with none of the audio going out of sync as I have seen in some longer YouTube videos. If you are a fan of Zasu Pitts, you will enjoy this entertaining trifle which runs for barely over one hour.

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.

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. "

What makes this daft little crime thriller so much fun, is the underlying premiss that even the nastiest of criminal types will still defer to a determined, feisty old lady - even if they would otherwise happily pull out the teeth of their enemies with a blunt screwdriver! Zasu Pitts is just such an old spinster, who becomes ensnared with a gang who are rigging boxing matches before unexpectedly (and really completely implausibly) being implicated with the deadly murderess "Ma Parker"! It's a lovely, simple little yarn - peppered with some wonderfully Mary Poppins-esque language; never a cuss word crosses her lips; and her ability to get squiffy by just holding the glass adds a gentle, friendly, class to this simple story. There are others in the cast, but they don't - nor d.