ZaSu Pitts

ZaSu Pitts
Pitts in trailer for the film Tish (1942)
Born	Eliza Susan Pitts (1894-01-03)January 3, 1894 Parsons, Labette County Kansas, USA
Died	June 7, 1963(1963-06-07) (aged 69) Hollywood, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Cancer
Resting place	Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California
Education	Santa Cruz High School
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1917–1963
Spouse(s)	Tom Gallery (m. 1920-1933; divorced) John E. Woodall (m. 1933-1963; her death)
Children	2

ZaSu Pitts (/ˈseɪzuː ˈpɪts/; née Eliza Susan Pitts; January 3, 1894 – June 7, 1963) was an American actress who starred in many silent dramas and comedies, transitioning to comedy sound films.

Early life

Eliza Susan Pitts was born in Parsons, Kansas to Rulandus and Nelly (née Shay) Pitts; she was the third of four children. Her father, who had lost a leg while serving in the 76th New York Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, had settled the family in Kansas by the time ZaSu was born.

The names of her father's sisters, Eliza and Susan, were purportedly the basis for the nickname "ZaSu", i.e. to satisfy competing family interests. She later adopted the nickname professionally and legally. It has been (incorrectly) spelled as Zazu Pitts in some film credits and news articles. Although the name is commonly mispronounced /ˈzæzuː/ ZAZ-oo or /ˈzeɪsuː/ ZAY-soo, or /ˈzeɪzuː/ ZAY-zoo, in her 1963 book Candy Hits (p. 15), Pitts herself gives the correct pronunciation as "Say Zoo" /ˈseɪzuː/, recounting that Mary Pickford had predicted, "[M]any will mispronounce it", and adding, "How right [she] was." In 1903, when she was nine years old, her family moved to Santa Cruz, California, to seek a warmer climate and better job opportunities. Her childhood home at 208 Lincoln Street still stands. She attended Santa Cruz High School, where she participated in school theatricals.

Career

ca. 1920

Pitts made her stage debut in 1914–15 doing school and local community theater in Santa Cruz. Going to Los Angeles in 1916, at the age of twenty-two, she spent many months seeking work as a film extra. Finally she was discovered for substantive roles in films by screenwriter Frances Marion. Marion cast Pitts as an orphaned slavey (child of work) in the silent film, The Little Princess (1917), starring Pickford. Years later, she was the leading lady in Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924). Based on her performance, von Stroheim labeled Pitts "the greatest dramatic actress". He also featured her in his films The Honeymoon (1928), The Wedding March (1928), War Nurse (1930) and Walking Down Broadway, which was re-edited by Alfred L. Werker and released as Hello, Sister! (1933).

David Butler and Zasu Pitts look lovingly at each other while Jack McDonald glares in a scene still for the 1919 silent drama "Better Times."

Pitts' popularity grew following a series of Universal one-reeler comedies and earned her first feature-length lead in King Vidor's Better Times (1919). The following year she married her first husband, Tom Gallery, with whom she was paired in several films, including Bright Eyes (1921), Heart of Twenty (1920), Patsy (1921) and A Daughter of Luxury (1922). In 1924, the actress, now a reputable comedy farceuse, was given the greatest tragic role of her career in Erich von Stroheim's 9½ hour epic Greed (1924). The surprise casting initially shocked Hollywood, but showed that Pitts could draw tears with her doleful demeanor as well as laughs. Having been extensively edited prior to release—the final theatrical cut ran just over two hours—the movie failed initially at the box office, but has since been restored to over four hours and is considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Pitts enjoyed her greatest fame in the 1930s, often starring in B movies and comedy shorts, teamed with Thelma Todd. She played secondary parts in many films. Her stock persona (a fretful, flustered, worrisome spinster) made her instantly recognizable and was often imitated in cartoons and other films. She starred in a number of Hal Roach shorts and features, and co-starred in a series of feature-length comedies with Slim Summerville. Switching between comedy shorts and features, by the advent of sound, she was relegated to comedy roles. A bitter disappointment was when she was replaced in the classic war drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) by Beryl Mercer after her initial appearance in previews drew unintentional laughs, despite her intense performance. She had viewers rolling in the aisles in Finn and Hattie (1931), The Guardsman (1931), Blondie of the Follies (1932), Sing and Like It (1934) and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). In the 1940s, she found work in vaudeville and on radio, trading banter with Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, and Rudy Vallee, among others. She appeared several times on the earliest Fibber McGee and Molly show, playing a dizzy dame constantly looking for a husband. Her brief stint in the Hildegarde Withers mystery series, succeeding Edna May Oliver, was unsuccessful, however.

In 1944, Pitts tackled Broadway, making her debut in the mystery, Ramshackle Inn. The play, written expressly for her, fared well, and she took the show on the road in later years. Post-war films continued to give Pitts the chance to play comic snoops and flighty relatives in such fare as Life with Father (1947), but in the 1950s she started focusing on television. This culminated in her best known series role, playing second banana to Gale Storm on CBS's The Gale Storm Show (Template:Ytv) (also known as Oh, Susannah) in the role of Elvira Nugent ("Nugie"), the shipboard beautician. In 1961, Pitts was cast opposite Earle Hodgins in the episode "Lonesome's Gal" on the ABC sitcom, Guestward, Ho!, set on a dude ranch in New Mexico. In 1962, Pitts appeared in an episode of CBS's Perry Mason, "The Case of the Absent Artist". Her last role was a switchboard operator in the madcap Stanley Kramer comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Personal life

Pitts was married to Thomas Sarsfield Gallery from 1920 to 1933. Gallery, an actor, became a well-known Los Angeles boxing promoter and later a TV executive. The couple had two children: Ann Gallery (born 1922) and Donald Michael "Sonny" Gallery (né Marvin Carville La Marr), whom they adopted and renamed after the 1926 death of his mother and Pitts' friend, silent film actress Barbara La Marr. In 1933, she married John Edward "Eddie" Woodall, with whom she remained until her death.

Later years and death

Declining health dominated Pitts' later years, particularly after she was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-1950s. However, she continued to work until the very end – making brief appearances in The Thrill of It All (1963) with Doris Day and James Garner, and as a cameo switchboard operator in the sheriff's office in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. She died June 7, 1963, aged 69, in Hollywood and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. Pitts wrote a book of candy recipes, Candy Hits by ZaSu Pitts, which was published posthumously in 1963.

Legacy

Zasu Pitts was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960. Her star can be found on the south side of the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard. In 1994 her place in the pantheon on silent film stars was affirmed when she was honored with her image on a United States postage stamp along with luminaries Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert,Harold Lloyd, the Keystone Cops, Theda Bara, and Buster Keaton as part of The Silent Screen Stars stamp set as designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. In Parsons, Kansas, there is a star tile at the entrance to the Parsons Theatre to commemorate her.

Actress Mae Questel, who performed character voices in Max Fleischer's Popeye the Sailor cartoons. reportedly based the fluttering utterances of Olive Oyl on Zasu Pitts, but added her own touches.

Partial filmography

Year	Film title	Role	Notes
1917	The Little Princess	Becky
1918	How Could You Jean?	Oscar's Sweetheart
1918	The Talk of the Town
1919	Better Times	Nancy Scroggs
1919	The Other Half	Jennie Jones, The Jazz Kid
1919	Poor Relations	Daisy Perkins
1920	Seeing It Through	Betty Lawrence
1921	Patsy	Patsy
1922	Youth to Youth	Emily
1923	Souls for Sale	Herself	Cameo role
1923	Three Wise Fools	Mickey
1923	Hollywood	Herself	Cameo role
1924	West of the Water Tower	Dessie Arnhalt
1924	Daughters of Today	Lorena
1924	Triumph	A Factory Girl
1924	Changing Husbands	Delia
1924	Greed	Trina
1925	The Great Divide	Polly Jordan
1925	Pretty Ladies	Maggie Keenan
1925	The Great Love	Nancy
1926	Monte Carlo	Hope Durant
1926	Sunny Side Up	Evelyn
1927	Casey at the Bat	Camille
1928	The Honeymoon	Caecilia	sequel to The Wedding March. Released only in Europe; lost
1928	The Wedding March	Cecelia Schweisser
1928	Sins of the Fathers	Mother Spengler
1929	Paris	Harriet
1929	The Locked Door	Telephone Girl
1929	The Squall	Lena
1929	Her Private Life	Timmins
1929	This Thing Called Love	Clara Bertrand
1930	No, No, Nanette	Pauline Hastings
1930	The Devil's Holiday	Ethel
1930	Monte Carlo	Bertha
1930	Passion Flower	Mrs. Harney
1930	Free Love	Ada
1931	The Bad Sister	Minnie
1931	Seed	Jennie
1931	A Woman of Experience	Katie
1931	Penrod and Sam	Mrs. Bassett	Alternative title: The Adventures of Penrod and Sam
1931	The Guardsman	Liesl, the Maid
1931	On the Loose	Zasu	Short subject.
1931	Beyond Victory	Mademoiselle Fritzi
1932	Broken Lullaby	Anna, Holderlin's Maid
1932	Shopworn	Aunt Dot
1932	Destry Rides Again	Temperance Worker	Alternative title: Justice Rides Again
1932	Westward Passage	Mrs. Truesdale
1932	Back Street	Mrs. Dole
1932	Blondie of the Follies	Gertie
1932	The Crooked Circle	Nora Rafferty
1932	Make Me a Star	Mrs. Scudder
1932	Strangers of the Evening	Sybil
1933	They Just Had to Get Married	Molly Hull
1933	Hello, Sister!	Millie
1933	Meet the Baron	Zasu
1933	Mr. Skitch	Maddie Skitch
1933	Professional Sweetheart	Elmerada de Leon
1934	Sing and Like It	Annie Snodgrass
1934	Dames	Matilda Ounce Hemingway
1934	Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch	Miss Hazy
1934	The Gay Bride	Mirabelle
1935	Ruggles of Red Gap	Prunella Judson
1935	Going Highbrow
1936	Thirteen Hours by Air	Miss Harkins
1936	The Plot Thickens	Hildegarde Withers
1937	Forty Naughty Girls	Hildegarde Withers
1939	The Lady's from Kentucky	Dulcey Lee
1939	Eternally Yours	Mrs. Bingham
1939	Naughty but Nice	Aunt Penelope Hardwick
1940	It All Came True	Miss Flint
1940	No, No Nanette	Pauline Hastings
1941	Broadway Limited	Myra
1941	Niagara Falls	Emmy Sawyer
1942	The Bashful Bachelor	Geraldine
1942	So's Your Aunt Emma	Aunt Emma	Alternative title: Meet the Mob
1943	Let's Face It!	Cornelia Figeson
1946	Breakfast in Hollywood	Elvira Spriggens
1947	Life with Father	Cousin Cora Cartwright
1950	Francis	Nurse Valerie Humpert
1952	Denver and Rio Grande	Jane Dwyer
1954	Francis Joins the WACS	Lt. Valerie Humpert
1957	This Could Be the Night	Mrs. Katie Shea
1961	The Teenage Millionaire	Aunt Theodora
1963	The Thrill of It All	Olivia
1963	It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World	Gertie–Switchboard Operator

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1954	The Best of Broadway	Miss Preen	Episode: "The Man Who Came to Dinner"
1955	Screen Directors Playhouse	Selma	Episode: "The Silent Partner"
1956	The 20th Century Fox Hour	Miss Appleton	Episode: "Mr. Belvedere"
1956– 1960	The Gale Storm Show	Elvira Nugent	91 episodes
1957	Private Secretary	Aunt Martha	Episode: "Not Quite Paradise"
1960	The Dennis O'Keefe Show	Loretta Kimball	Episode: "Dimples"
1961	Guestward, Ho!		Episode: "Lonesome's Gal"
1961	Perry Mason	Daphne Whilom	Episode: "The Case of the Absent Artist"
1963	Burke's Law	Mrs. Bowie	Episode: "Who Killed Holly Howard?"

See also

• Pitts and Todd

External links

• ZaSu Pitts at IMDb
• ZaSu Pitts at AllMovie
• ZaSu Pitts at the Internet Broadway Database
• Photographs and literature
• Hands with a Heart: The Personal Biography of Actress ZaSu Pitts (authorized biography); publisher's page