Catch-As Catch-Can

A not too bad Hal Roach short in the Zasu Pitts/ Thelma Todd series. Maybe later shorts were cheap, unimaginative, derivative and sloppy but this one, in its very minor way, is on the money. For me it was stolen by a Billy Gilbert bit (uncredited) where he is the ring announcer who renders the introductory speeches totally unintelligible but they sound absolutely right. There was more to the performer than generally seen which was usually the thin band built around his famous slow burn sthick and the blustering anger bit and of course his famous sneeze. That he was so audibly adept was probably from an earlier career in vaudeville. No wonder Chaplin used him as his "Göring" in The Great Dictator.

The picture has a set up with the girls as hotel switchboard operators, with the homesick hick wrestler threatening to leave "the big match" and go home upstairs. The pay off is the big wrestling match and Zasu needing to wear her hat. Nothing you haven't seen before but handled well without any missing angles or flubbed timing.

Director is Marshall 'Mickey' Neilen who started in the business as Cecil B. DeMille's chauffeur, handsome as a movie star, and went on the be one of the most important directors in Hollywood, particularly as Mary Pickford's house director. He was laid low by The Drink and there is a heart wrenching description of him by Garson Kanin in his memoirs of directing him in a bit in The Great Man Votes (1939). No one had an earlier start in Hollywood. He was on top for a lot of years but Catch as Catch Can represents a stop closer to the bottom than the top. He exists like a specter in the background in 1937's A Star is Born.

I've always enjoyed watching Zazu Pitts but do kinda feel sorry for her that she was typecast so early in her career. In this one, she is a little less dithery than usual and suitably amusing. Zazu and Thelma are friends who work as switchboard operators at the Empire Hotel. There's a bit early in the short where a drunk is trying to make a phone call; at one point a bumble bee (how likely is that?) lands on the phone's old fashioned mouth piece buzzing away and the drunk hangs up saying "busy." Simple humor but I like it. Thelma's boyfriend manages a wrestler nicknamed "Strangler." He's homesick for the family farm in Kansas and plans to leave prior to a big fight on which his manager has bet a bundle. "Strangler" falls for Zazu and agrees to fight. I thought the fight scenes and the business with Zazu's hat was pretty funny – this short was pleasant and amusing although not a "laugh-out-loud comedy.

I have seen quite a few of the Thelma Todd/Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd/Patsy Kelly shorts and must say that by and large they are pretty awful. While the Hal Roach Studio made some wonderfully funny films (such as Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase), they also made some obviously lesser series during this same heyday of the late 20s and early 1930s--such as The Boy Friends and the Thelma Todd comedies. There are several problems with the material--most of which is that the writers just seemed to be asleep and included very little funny material. Plus, unlike their A-teams, Todd & Pitts were NOT the whole show but many bit players were included to get the laughs--as if they didn't trust the ladies to be funny.

This film finds Guinn Williams as a wrestler who is sick of the city and wants to go back home to the farm. However, he is also infatuated with Zasu and so Williams' agent tries to get her help to keep him from giving up his career. There are a few very, very small laughs here and there, but no more.

Catch as Catch Can (1931)

** (out of 4)

Flat comedy from Hal Roach has a wrestler growing homesick before a big fight so his manager fixes him up with Zasu Pitts who grew up on the farm as well. That night Zasu drags Thelma Todd to the fight where more than just one match breaks out. This Pitts-Todd comedy isn't as bad as some of them and it's not as good as some of them. Pretty straight comment but this short really doesn't do much to try and stand out and at times I kept wondering if the screenwriters had forgotten to throw any comedy in. The first half of the film takes place at the hotel where nothing funny happens unless the writers thought having the wrestler rip up his trunk would be funny. The girls play switchboard operators but nothing is every done with it. The second half of the film contains a few laughs once the girls get to the wrestling match including one funny scene where they're walking down a row of chairs trying to get to their seats when they come across a very large man who they can't pass. Another funny bit happens when Pitts gets a note that her new friends wants her to wear a hat if she loves him but the man behind her keeps taking it off because he can't see around it.