O Intrometido

At Niagara Falls, oil tycoon Slim Summerville (as Sam Sawyer) attempts suicide but is stopped by peanut vendor Tommy Mack. We flashback to view his story… Though older than most newlyweds, Mr. Summerville and bride Zasu Pitts (as Emmy) are on their way to a hotel. They meet younger couple Marjorie Woodworth (as Margy Blake) and Tom Brown (as Tom Wilson) on the road, with car trouble. At the "Falls View Hotel", Ms. Pitts wants to have sex with her groom, but Summerville becomes involved with Ms. Woodworth and Mr. Brown. Summerville thinks the other couple is bickering, and endeavors to reunite them. But Woodworth and Brown are not even married. It's all silly, but short.

**** Niagara Falls (10/17/41) Gordon Douglas ~ Slim Summerville, Marjorie Woodworth, Tom Brown, Zasu Pitts

I was very surprised when I read a few of the reviews for this film, as apparently some time after NIAGARA FALLS was made, someone stupidly combined this film with MISS POLLY. While both are short Hal Roach films and star many of the same actors, combining them is like combining PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE with STAR WARS! Sure, they're both sci-fi films, but other than that there is a huge gap in quality of the two pictures. Bluntly put, NIAGARA FALLS is a cute comedy whereas MISS POLLY is a pile of crap--merging them together must have resulted in a very confusing film indeed! I saw NIAGARA FALLS on Turner Classic Movies and it was shown in its original form--thank goodness. Now I am sure that many will think my score of 9 is way out of line, but I am NOT comparing this film to every other movie--just other short films (such as Roach's "Streamliners") and B-movies. I've actually seen quite a few of these post-Laurel and Hardy films by Roach Studios and this is bar far the funniest and best made of the bunch (and they do vary wildly in quality).

What makes this film so good is the quality of the writing. While MISS POLLY totally missed the mark, here with NIAGARA FALLS everything fell perfectly into place. One way I know it was such a good film is that my teenage daughter who is NOT a lover of old films like me still loved the film. Another way I know how good it was is that we both laughed repeatedly at the film. Sure, sometimes the humor wasn't 100% sophisticated, but it was funny--very, very funny. I particularly loved how outlandish the film became--such as the scenes with the gun and the very end of the film.

As far as the acting goes, it was fine but I don't know why Slim and Zasu got secondary billing--they (particularly Slim Summerville) were great. Zasu was not annoying (something she frequently was in other films) and Slim was like a walking cartoon character.

So if you'd like a good laugh and don't mind that the film is occasionally very silly, watch this movie.

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.

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.)

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.