So's Your Aunt Emma!

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.

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.

One day they may clean up the picture but when you get into the story, the bad copy may just add that 1942 ambiance.

A spinster known as Aunt Emma (Zazu Pitts) to her friends missed her chance to marry a prizefighter. However, after his death, she takes a chance to help his son to become a great fighter. She travels from a small Midwest town to the big city. There in her efforts to help him, she crosses paths with several criminal types. They spot her umbrella and mistake her for the guntote'n Ma Parker criminal type. Soon the bad guys are being dispatched like flies. Maybe she is Ma Parker. Let us watch and see who is next.

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.

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.