Niagara Falls

This is some new kind of insanity. They say the story of making some pictures is more interesting than the pictures themselves but how this film ever got packaged like this must be the best story to come out of the post MGM Hal Roach Studio. Now you will find this film listed as 43 minutes and to be sure NIAGARA FALLS (1941) clocks in at 43 minutes and 7 seconds as seen in a copy shown on CUNY TV in New York. When Turner Classics announced a screening of NIAGARA FALLS they put it in a 90 minute slot. I thought that possibly they were planning on filling the time with some of the Zasu Pitts/Thelma Todd two reelers that they'd been showing recently.

I already had a copy of NIAGARA FALLS but out of curiosity I fired up the old VCR and was surprised that when after the credits a whole different picture came on. I did some research and found out that what had happened was that MISS POLLY (1941), also starring Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville, had been shoehorned in. The MISS POLLY portion of the picture is exactly 43 minutes long and the NIAGARA FALLS section lacks only 20 sec. including the titles for a total of 1:25:40. Apparently Hal Roach made these weird running time films he called "streamliners", longer than the longest "shorts" at 20-25 min. but not quite up to the industry standards for a minimum running time for a feature.

They weren't on the same bill, with NIAGARA FALLS released on Oct. 17 1941 and MISS POLLY on Nov. 14. Just when and how and why these films were joined together must be a story. They were both reissued in 1948 by Favorite Films and marketed on DVD by Alpha Video in 2006. There are many DVD's which combine several old B's and programmers but as separate entities so the suspicion is that Favorite did it to market the re-issue as a legitimate feature. They accomplished this very simply. Keeping the original opening and closing titles from NIAGARA FALLS (making everyone who made or appeared in MISS POLLY uncredited) they simply ran MISS POLLY and at the end, (minus the end credits, the missing 20 sec.?) they suddenly fade and resolve to the beginning of NIAGARA FALLS which, curiously enough, is a set up for a flash back, giving this version of NIAGARA FALLS one of the weirdest structures of any film extant. While MISS POLLY ends with Slim Summerville, who is Zasu Pitts handyman, the object of dosed leers from the town prude, NIAGARA FALLS begins with Summerville and Pitts newly married and on the road to Niagara Falls. This "mystery" is something of a tempest in a teapot as both pictures are rehashed bits from the dawn of cinema as Hal Roach never tossed away a gag. For example here's the two people sharing a bathroom who don't know about the other gag.

So this is recommended only for completests, obsessing supporting player fanatics, fans of Slim Summerville and/or Zasu Pitts or the merely curious. Sort of like One Million B.C. sit coms.

This weak little effort doesn't begin to use a fraction of the ability of its two leads, Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts, in no small part because too much of the story concerns the two good-looking but uninteresting juveniles. The picture is one of Roach's one-hour 'streamliners' that he was concentrating on in this period; it took World War Two and contract work to stabilize the studio.

However, the little time they do get together -- in this honeymoon hotel movie -- is time well spent. The two were in ten movies together -- if you don't count ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, where they reshot all of Miss Pitts' scenes with another actress -- and they certainly worked together well. This was their last movie together. A pity they couldn't end on a higher note.

Sweethearts Sam (Slim Summerville) and Emmy (Zasu Pitts) have waited twenty years to get married but are finally on their way to a Niagara Falls hotel. Nearly there, they encounter a young couple having car trouble at the side of the road. Sam and Emmy assume the couple are newlyweds like themselves; in fact, Margy (Marjorie Woodworth) and Tom (Tom Brown) are anything but—they're strangers having trouble with two separate cars, and Margy is helping herself to Tom's tools while he fiddles under his own hood. There lies the setup: and the rest of the film consists of Sam attempting to "reconcile" Tom and Margy; Emmy waiting for Sam to pay attention to her back in the bridal suite; and Margy and Tom trading insults, attempting to escape Sam's watchful eye, and eventually….Well, I don't want to spoil it for you.

This is a very silly film, which is completely okay because it makes absolutely no pretensions to being anything else.

The two young leads are attractive and pleasant—nothing exceptional, but they're interesting enough to root for. We don't get enough of Zasu Pitts—though she does have a good scene cuddling with a man's jacket, pretending it's Sam.

Summerville as Sam is persistently and vigorously goofy, to the point where he really looks natural enough climbing along a window ledge in his pajamas carrying a large revolver. The scene where he re-enters from the window ledge into a strange couple's room and hides in their bed is hilarious—what makes it funniest is that he plays it exactly as if this ridiculous situation is perfectly normal.

This 43-minute "streamliner" has to be just about what Hal Roach had in mind when he started producing these quickies.

This appears to be two movies spliced into one. In the first, ZaSu Pitts is a renegade in a small town. She wants to help the romantic life of Marjorie Woodworth. OK: I'd never heard of her before either. But she and Pitts are in both parts of this concoction.

Before we know it, Pitts is no longer Miss {Polly. She is Emmie. I had to rewind to see if I'd fallen asleep somewhere. I hadn't. She no longer in a small town but on her way to the title Honeymoon destination.

The movie has some cute moments. The first part is better, with roles for what seems to be every third-rate character actress working in Hollywood at the time.

And what of Ms. Woolworth? She sounds a little like Betty Hutton. She sounds a little like Marie Wilson. She's pretty, certainly. But she's no comedienne.

Pitts often was used in very small roles. Here she has the largest role. She's always fun, though this movie made me wonder if a little of her doesn't go quite a long way. (As a comic. When she was a tragic actress in Von Stroheim silents -- "The Wedding March" and Greed" are the two I have seen -- she was brilliant.)

Being a fan of ZaSu Pitts comedies, I thought this one looked like it was worth a try. I was quite disappointed.

(The version I saw was on TCM, but consisted only of the Niagara Falls movie; the Miss Polly movie was absent.) The talents of the actors, who give fine performances, is wasted on one of the stupidest stories I have ever had the misfortune of sitting through.

Tom Brown (Tom Wilson) surprised me by being the strongest actor in the show, but the spotlight is hogged by Slim Summerville (Sam Sawyer), who, if he has any talent, didn't demonstrate it here.

ZaSu Pitts (Elly Sawyer) is great, but doesn't have near big enough a part. The biggest laugh in the movie is when she ends up under Sam under a table.

The only one in the movie who has any sense at all is Tom Wilson. Margie (Marjorie Woodworth) is unreasonable in general. While she is physically quite attractive, her personality and attitudes make her completely undesirable. Elly, Sam, and the hotel desk clerk are just complete fools.

Sam and Elly give up their honeymoon suite in the crowded hotel for Tom and Margie. But then they take it back. Sam ends up imprisoning Tom and Margie in their room. Most of the movie is them trying to break out, but Sam, using a rifle, always puts them back again.

Towards the end comes the worst part. Tom, who is finally about to make good his escape, runs into a minister on a lower floor of the hotel. Now the guy, who, as I said, is the only one in the whole movie who has a head on his shoulders, suddenly, for absolutely no reason at all, decides he has to marry Margie!

He drags the minister up to the room he has just escaped from, but Margie doesn't want to marry him. He gives her a kiss, and now, after one kiss, she feels compelled to marry him.

Finally, Sam has the nerve to say to Tom, "You deceived me," when practically the only line Tom had to Sam earlier was, "We're not married," to which Sam replied, "You think I'd believe that?"

Idiotic.