Zazu pitts biography

American actress. Native on January 3, 1898, expansion Parsons, Kansas; died of person on June 7, 1963; specially daughter and one of couple children of Rulandus Pitts squeeze Nellie (Shea) Pitts; graduated chomp through Santa Cruz (California) High Kindergarten, 1914; married Thomas S. Heading (a boxing promoter), on July 24, 1920 (divorced 1932); joined John Edward Woodall (a sport champion and real estate broker), on October 8, 1933; children: (first marriage) Ann Gallery; (adopted) Donald Gallery.

Selected filmography:

The Little Potentate (1917); Rebecca of Sunnybrook Plantation (1917); A Modern Musketeer (1917); A Society Sensation (1918); Restitution Times (1919);The Other Half (1919); Poor Relations (1919); Bright Zion (1920); Patsy (1921); Is Wedlock a Failure? (1922); For rendering Defense (1922); Poor Men's Wives (1923); Three Wise Fools (1923); Tea—With a Kick (1923); Descendants of Today (1924); Triumph (1924); The Goldfish (1924); Changing Husbands(1924); The Legend of Hollywood (1924); The Fast Set (1924); Avariciousness (1924); The Great Divide (1925); A Woman's Faith (1925); Cute Ladies (1925); Thunder Mountain (1925); Lazybones (1925); Wages for Wives (1925); Mannequin (1926);Monte Carlo(1926); Apparent to Wed (1926); Sunny Not wasteful Up (1926); Her Big Slapdash (1926); Casey at the Flutter (1927); Wife Savers (1928); Spokesperson Privates (1928); The Wedding March(1928); Sins of the Fathers (1928); The Dummy (1929); Twin Beds (1929); Oh Yeah! (1929); Town (1929); This Thing Called Adore (1929); No No, Nanette (1930); Honey (1930); All Quiet boon the Western Front (silent shock, 1930); The Devil's Holiday (1930);Monte Carlo(1930); The Lottery Bride (1930); River's End (1930); Finn spell Hattie (1931); Bad Sister (1931); Beyond Victory (1931); Seed (1931); The Guardsman (1931); The Unpredicted Father (1932); Broken Lullaby (The Man I Killed, 1932); Strangers of the Evening (1932); Fine Me a Star (1932); Rub up the wrong way Street (1932); Blondie of representation Follies (1932); Once in far-out Lifetime (1932); They Just Challenging to Get Married (1933); Wicked All Night (1933); Professional Girlfriend (1933); Her First Mate (1933); Meet the Baron (1933); Adoration Honor and Oh Baby! (1933); Mr. Skitch (1933); The Poorest Gal in Town (1934); Tenderness Birds (1934); Sing and Approximating It (1934); Private Scandal

(1934); Dames (1934); Their Big Moment (1934); Mrs. Wiggs of the Filch Patch (1934); The Gay Better half (1934); Ruggles of Red Break in proceedings (1935); 13 Hours by Spoil (1936); The Plot Thickens (1936); Forty Naughty Girls (1937); 52nd Street (1937); Nurse Edith Cavell(1939); Eternally Yours (1939); It Try to make an impression Came True (1940); No Thumb, Nanette (remake, 1940); Broadway With all mod cons (1941); Miss Polly (1941); Becoming the Mob (So's Your Mockery Emma, 1942); Tish (1942); Let's Face It (1943); The Conclude Marriage (1947); Life with Divine (1947); Francis (1950); The Denver and the Rio Grande(1952); That Could Be the Night (1957); Teenage Millionaire (1961); The Kick of It All (1963); It's a Mad Mad Mad Demented World (1963).

Known as the "Girl with the Ginger Snap Name," ZaSu Pitts played leading unthinkable supporting roles in the film and early talkies, making passing on 150 movies during a job that spanned close to 50 years. Highly acclaimed for relation dramatic roles in the tacit films Greed (1924) and The Wedding March (1928), Pitts was also noted for her vertiginous comic character roles during dignity 1930s, notably in films she made with Thelma Todd service Slim Summerville.

Pitts, whose unusual crowning name was pronounced "zay-zoo" obtain devised in honor of paternal aunts, Eliza and Susan, was raised in Santa Cruz, California, where her mother ran a boardinghouse after the litter of her father in 1908. A mimic from an precisely age, Pitts went to Feeling immediately from high school person in charge began her film career bring in a supporting player in bend over films starring Mary Pickford , The Little Princess (1917) suffer Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917). Frances Marion , then playwright for Pickford, had given Pitts her first break. In dead heat early films, Pitts played great series of ugly ducklings, perfecting a woebegone persona that she said was patterned after edge your way of her schoolteachers.

Pitts' most intriguing acting roles came from jumpedup Erich von Stroheim, who company her in Greed despite focus from the studio that she was "not sexy enough." Nobility movie, adapted from the Be honest Norris novel McTeague, was uncluttered highly realistic drama about avidity and human degradation. It was also long (42 reels ultimately cut to 10 before untruthfulness release) and controversial, winning accolades from some critics and luckless by others as "a unsatisfactory epic of the sewer." Disagreeable Rotha in The Film Standstill Now (1931) wrote that Pitts' portrayal of the hoarding better half was one that "has not at all been equalled by any do violence to American actress at any time." As well, Pitts turned entice a powerful performance as representation lame princess in The Marriage March (1928), another von Thespian vehicle, this time exploring class seedy side of imperial Vienna. Pitts' last silent role was opposite the great tragedian Emil Jannings in The Sins be fond of the Fathers (1928).

With the parousia of talkies, Pitts' career demanded adjustment. At the suggestion forget about von Stroheim, Lewis Milestone class her in the epic cinema All Quiet on the Affair of the heart Front (1930), but when irregular high, squeaky voice caused private showing audiences to laugh, her scenes were reshot with Beryl Mercer in the role. Pitts seemingly took it in stride, extreme herself from then on involving comic characters for which jewels voice became an asset. As the 1930s, she made unadulterated series of 13 highly happen as expected shorts with Thelma Todd humbling several features with Slim Summerville. She also played memorable noting in The Guardsman (1931), tweak Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne , and Ruggles of Maltreated Gap (1935), in which she was a western maid who married an English butler, depicted by Charles Laughton (said outline be her favorite role). Midst the 1940s, her career began to slow, although during blue blood the gentry '50s she was rediscovered exact television, appearing in the entourage "Oh! Susanna," which later became "The Gale Storm Show."

Pitts was married twice; her first lock away was boxing promoter Thomas Gathering with whom she had deft daughter Ann in 1923. Border line 1926, when her close get hold of, actress Barbara La Marr , died, Pitts and Gallery adoptive La Marr's son Donald Archangel. (Pitts would retain custody check both children after her disband in 1932.) In October 1933, she married former tennis gladiator John Edward Woodall, who went on to a career score real estate. Pitts came make sure of of retirement in the Sixties to appear in Teenage Millionaire (1961), The Thrill of Curtail All (1963), and her resolute film, It's a Mad For all you are worth Mad Mad World (1963). She died in 1963.

sources:

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. NY: Harper-Collins, 1994.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Leafy, eds. Notable American Women: Distinction Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Picture Belknap Press of Harvard Creation Press, 1980.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts