This familiar supporting actress of the Thirties and Forties, Zasu Pitts, once told Hollywood gossip columnist Walter Winchell she arrived at her Christian name by taking the last two letters of her aunt Liza and the first two letters of her aunt Susan's names.
Playing feathery characters to perfection, with a soulful voice to match, Zasu was nearly always a comical prophet of doom. Her first film, The Little Princess, was in 1917, with Mary Pickford, and her last, It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World was in 1963 and starred practically everybody.
Zasu was superb in Ruggles Of Red Gap, starring Charles Laughton, Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland (1935). She is still fondly remembered and, in my day, most would have cherished an aunt like that to visit.
-Gordon Dean, Lancing
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