ZaSu Pitts — Loved at Last (1927) 🇺🇸

November 22, 2023

She was just a plain, frowzy, small-town dressmaker — a pathetic, worn-at-the-seams creature with bent back, weak eyes, and an apologetic smile. But the clumsy Casey, who could make a baseball bat talk a language understood by all good ball fans, humbly adored her.

by Myrtle Gebhart

Again, we have the same wistful gray eyes, the same brown hair streaming in wisps. This time our heroine pursues her big brawny hero up and down Alpine mountain paths, with many ludicrous adventures — and catches him.

Zasu Pitts’ wide gray eyes stared into mine with that pathetic intensity that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.

“The heroine!” she said. “Twice in succession! I haven’t got over the shock yet. Twice, I love, and get, Wally Beery. First time in nine years on the screen that I’ve been lucky in love.”

So successful has been the teaming of Zasu with Wallace Beery in Casey at the Bat and then later in “The Big Sneeze” [The movie in question is probably Wife Savers (1928)] that there is some talk of making the affiliation permanent. But Zasu, as usual, belittles herself.

“Why team anybody with Beery?” she says. “His personality alone carries any picture — doesn’t make any difference who plays opposite.”

It does make a difference, though, who plays opposite him, and few other actresses could have given such genuine, touching portrayals as Zasu did, first as the small-town dressmaker in Casey at the Bat, and then as the woebegone peasant girl in The Big Sneeze.

The “love interest” in both these films was unusual in that it was drab and ordinary rather than the usual prettified variety. Homely, real folks had the spotlight.

The Wedding March, made just prior to the above two films, reveals a new and radiantly lovely Zasu. Her angularity has become, under artful lighting, a patrician slimness; her unmanageable hair is covered by a soft, fluffy blond wig. Partly is her ethereal exquisiteness in this film due to minute artifice, partly to her own delicate portrayal of her role.

“Don’t flatter me,” said Zasu, refusing to agree with me that she is beautiful in The Wedding March.

It has always seemed incongruous, somehow, that Zasu should be an actress. Never in the realm of make-believe was there a person less touched by artificiality. Zasu’s is a homespun tale — a pilgrimage over a difficult bridge to success. Nine years ago, Zasu Pitts left a little California town to be an actress. Her friends were skeptical. No fairy princess had fluttered over her cradle to endow her with outstanding beauty and grace. She was destined for weary drudging in a land peopled with beautiful girls.

Painfully conscious that she didn’t fit in, she knocked timidly at the magic door through which a wealth of beauty was passing, and wedged herself in only when the need was found for some one to contrast with beauty. By perseverance and by slowly winning popularity among the fans, she has made her little niche secure. And now, at last, so strong has become the public liking for her, that the keepers of the magic castle have had to make a bigger, more important place for her.

Zasu’s charm lies in her complete naturalness. Her brown hair is usually flying in all directions. Clothes always look utilitarian on Zasu. Her dress is usually dark, of serge or some other serviceable material, or in the summer, it’s a simple print, without trimming. She wears, usually, a plain coat and a knock-about felt hat pulled down over her eyes.

This description is not meant in disparagement — quite the opposite. I’m trying to make clear her most likable quality — absolute freedom from pose. That she has remained the typical small-town girl is the greatest thing to her credit in an atmosphere where even the most sincere are apt to be touched by theatricalism.

“Why did you return to comedy after the magnificence and tragedy of The Wedding March?” I asked.

She did not give me one of those high-sounding reasons which most actresses have on tap to explain the various vagaries of their careers.

“Don’t be silly,” she rebuked me, over our common-sense vegetable luncheon — which, of course, we topped off with an indigestible dessert. “I’m a working woman. I take what I can get. It was the only thing offered me just then at anything approaching the salary I wanted.

“Besides, I like comedy. After crying for five months in The Wedding March, as poor, limping Princess Cecilia, comedy was a welcome relief.”

It’s customary for Zasu to be disappointed. At times she is raised to a point of feverish expectancy, almost certainty, that some cherished wish will be gratified, only to be let down with a thud. She longed to play Lovey Mary, but lost the role because somebody thought her too tall. Twinkletoes, which Colleen Moore did, was another fond hope of Zasu’s.

“My dreams are all bubbles,” she said. “Everybody laughs at them. I used to feel sad that the ugly duckling had to be content with drab, unlovely things, but I’ve discovered that I’ve got a lot of worth-while, permanent things out of life that many of the pretty flappers haven’t. Might mention Tom and the two kids, for instance,” she concluded, with an elaborate air of indifference, referring, of course, to her husband, Tom Gallery, and their two children.

Ann, five years old, is their own child. Sonny is the youngster who was adopted by Barbara La Marr, then, after her death, adopted by Zasu and Tom to be a playmate for Ann.

“We’ve found the records of Sonny’s birth,” said Zasu. “He’s two months younger than Ann, so we’re going to make them twins, celebrate their birthdays together, and tell them that, as they are twins, they get only one present between them, which they must share. Will teach them generosity, and be economical for us.”

But don’t believe it. Zasu and Tom will follow no such procedure. They can’t do enough for those two children, and simply lavish affection and toys upon them. They live at the beach all year round, despite the discomfort of the long drive into Hollywood, just because the beach is healthier for the children.

As long as you will listen, Zasu will regale you with anecdotes about the children — how they call Sunday “God’s day,” and anticipate it each week because they are allowed to dress up in their best clothes and accompany Zasu and Tom to church, and so on. And how furious she gets when some thoughtless writer tacks an “e” on Ann’s name, which Zasu says she gave her because it was the shortest one she could think of, and incapable of mispronunciation.

“I’m sick,” she said, “of being pronounced Sassie or Zuzu or something equally bad. That comes from having two doting aunts, syllables of whose names had to be combined in christening me.”

If it were any other two people than Zasu and Tom, I’d be afraid to call them “one of filmdom’s happiest couples,” because that phrase has so often been used to describe couples who almost immediately afterward got divorced, that it has come to be regarded as a jinx. But knowing the solid and worth-while fundamentals upon which their marriage is based, knowing their genuine comradeship and sincere respect for each other, I risk tagging Zasu and Tom with that description.

“You will now give me a recipe for a happy marriage “ I started.

“I will not,” drawled Zasu. “Tom and I are superstitious about that sort of thing. We’ve seen too many couples brag about their happiness and then suddenly break up. So we keep mum.”

However, there’s no law against my telling you a few of the little things that I myself have noticed about their married life. For instance, they never cross each other. When Tom, who manages the Hollywood American Legion Stadium, takes a notion to go to New York to look over contestants for his ring, Zasu casually packs his things and waves him off with a distracted kiss.

Not because she is glad to see him go, but because she is wise enough to know that you keep a husband by giving him plenty of freedom. Besides, when she wants to take a vacation by herself, he is equally generous.

I’ve never known a girl so persistently to discredit compliments to herself as Zasu does. And it’s real modesty on her part. When you comment that she is a good cook, she tells you that she can’t sew a stitch. When you insist that she could do the delicately sad roles that she secretly yearns for, she says, “Quit your kidding.”

She bluntly refuses to be prettified for publication, and once fired a press agent because he said such “silly” things about her. You would think that, after nine years of Hollywood, she would have got used to the tricks of publicity. But not Zasu — she hates it.

Whenever I am with Zasu Pitts, a line comes to mind: “Old home things touched at sunset in the quiet.” I might have quoted only that for you, instead of writing all that I have, for it gives her to you better than can any words of mine.

ZaSu Pitts — Loved at Last (1927) | www.vintoz.com