War Mamas

Zasu Pitts was a phenomenon. Just look at her Biography in IMDb.com! Her talents were legendary. She was equal parts tragedienne and comedienne. Today is hardly seen or heard.

Therein lies one of the great tragedies of the silver screen whether silent or talking.

Zasu's acting can be said to be one of the most naturalistic seen on the screen. It's a nuance that has to be seen to be understood and appreciated. She makes every other actor seem as if they are doing only one thing: acting.

It has been said that she stole every scene she was in. Even in this innocent tale of two women during the Big One, Zasu's inimitable charm comes through in every scene.

If it doesn't hit you after seeing this 21-minute short, keep looking for Zasu and you'll see what I mean. After it hits you I know you will wonder why she isn't better known or revered today. I know I did.

A short war-time comedy starring Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts. The ladies are fine comedic actresses but the material is very thin. First they're up against a tough matron; then they get lost and end up behind enemy lines, pretending to be French girls (but speaking English?)and fooling the caricatures Germans. Most of the jokes are not very funny. A long, long strip-poker scene pummels the comedy into the ground. When Zasu actually likes the attentions of one portly German, it becomes kind of uncomfortable. The ladies both deserve better -- and they got better in other projects. Worth it only if you're a completest for Thelma or Zasu. But their chemistry together is good.

In this episode of the Girl Friends, Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd are some sort of officers during the First World War. After some preliminary issues, they get trapped behind German lines with Allan Lane and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams. Fortunately, there are German officers who like to play games, so the girls inveigle them into strip poker.

Hal Roach had been trying to set up a pair of comediennes in a series, a sort of female Laurel & Hardy, for half a decade by this point. Fortunately, with Miss Pitts and Miss Todd, he had himself a pair of able farceurs, and the series, while mostly forgotten these days, is unfairly so. Take a look at this one and see if you agree.

War Mamas (1931)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely weak entry in the Zasu Pitts/Thelma Todd series has the girls volunteering to help during WW1 but they keep getting in trouble with the woman in charge of them. The second half of the short has the girls driving the wrong way and ending up behind German lines where they end up playing strip poker with a couple German captains. WAR MAMAS is a pretty bad film but thankfully it's so bad and so poorly directed that fans of bad movies will probably find it surreal enough to make it worth wasting 20-minutes on. There's not a single frame that's funny in this picture and the poker sequence is stretched out so long that you can't help but become annoyed with everything going on. Zasu, as you'd expect, keeps cheating at the cards but the Germans are too dumb to catch on. Now, if you were going to have a strip poker scene with Thelma Todd don't you think you'd want to show her off a little bit? That's doesn't happen here during a strip poker sequence even though every other short did manage to show her off. Director Marshall Neilan doesn't appear to know how to stage a scene as the timing is all over the place and none of the shots even appear to have been set up very well. Just check out a scene where the girls accidentally drop a glass pitcher out the window, which then hits their leader in the head. Both Pitts and Todd are obviously giving it their all but there simply isn't anything here that pays off.

"War Mamas" is a Zasu Pitts/Thelma Todd film which offers much more in the way of plot than most of their shorts. However, like too many of these films, what they do with the story is a bit of a disappointment. The overall film isn't bad...but it really isn't all that funny.

The story is set during WWI and Thelma and Zasu arrive at the front lines in France. They meet up with a couple male soldiers and head out for some fun...and somehow find themselves behind German lines. So, it's up to the girls to somehow disable a bunch of German soldiers so they can make their escape. Much of this time is spend playing Strip Poker with an idiot general and a major.

While WWI comedies could be funny (Laurel & Hardy made a couple dandy WWI films), this one failed to deliver on the laughs again and again. It was as if the writers really only had broad ideas for laughs but didn't writer them. Not a bad film exactly...but one that is strikingly unfunny given that there is more plot than usual for the pair and should have been funnier.