So's Your Aunt Emma!

It's an eye-catching title, sure to get attention of wartime audiences looking for escape. Pitts' character Aunt Emma is an inventive comedic creation. On one hand, she's a sedate old maid ruled by two prim sisters; on the other, once outside their influence and taking up with newspaper reporter Terry (Pryor), she gains self-confidence and transforms subtly into an assertive mastermind. Too bad the clotted narrative crowds her transformative humor; that is, until the end when she gets needed showcase having mastered the street-tough lingo of that day. It's like Mother Hubbard sounding like Al Capone.

The supporting cast includes familiar faces, such as Fowley, Hymer, Elliot, and Coffin. But I especially glom onto Elizabeth Russell. With her cat-like eyes, once you see her you don't forget her, as the great Val Lewton knew when he cast her in a number of his classic horror films of the 40's, eg. Cat People (1942).

All in all, it's an unusual light-hearted crime flick that unfortunately piles on too much plot that the clever Pitts and her fluttery humor must compete with.

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.

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. "

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.

Zasu Pitts is wonderful as Emma Bates, an unassuming small town lady who makes a trip to the big city to see a boxing match and ends up holding her own in the middle of a mob battle.

Zasu is sweet and odd as Aunt Emma, staid in appearance, a respectable woman; however, Zasu is a riot when she takes on the role of "Ma Parker," that much-feared lady gangster who carries a gun in her umbrella and can "shoot silver dollars out of the air."

The plot, for what it's worth, involves Emma's visit to see the boxer son of an old flame, some gangsters running the boxing game, some shooting and kidnapping, and a newspaperman who can't catch a scoop if it lands in his lap but is nevertheless a good hearted guy with whom Zasu strikes up a friendship. It all wouldn't make much sense, I'm sure, if you were to study it too closely…but why would you?

Lots of fun, especially for anyone who's a fan of Zasu's peculiar charm.