Zasu Pitts

ZaSu Pitts was born in Parsons, Kansas, the third of four children of Rulandus and Nelly (née Shay) Pitts. Her father, who had lost a leg while serving in the 76th New York Infantry in the Civil War, had settled the family in Kansas before ZaSu's birth.

The names of her father's sisters, Eliza and Susan, were purportedly the basis for the name "ZaSu", i.e., to satisfy competing family interests. It has been (incorrectly) spelled as Zazu Pitts in some film credits and news articles. Although the name is commonly mispronounced ZAZ-oo or ZAY-soo, or ZAY-zoo, in her 1963 book Candy Hits (pg. 15), published the year of her death, the actress gave the correct pronunciation as "Say Zoo" , recounting that Mary Pickford had predicted "many will mispronounce it", and adding, "How right she was."

However, when introducing herself on the September 4, 1952 episode of I've Got a Secret, she herself pronounced it as Zay-zoo. Her comedy series partner Thelma Todd also clearly addresses her as Zay-zoo in the hospital room scene of Alum and Eve (1932).

In 1903, when Pitts 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. 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 22, she spent many months seeking work as a film extra. Finally, she was discovered for substantive roles in films by screenwriter Frances Marion, who cast Pitts as an orphaned slavey (child of work) in the silent film A Little Princess (1917), starring Pickford.

Pitts's 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 Heart of Twenty (1920), Bright Eyes, Patsy (both 1921) and A Daughter of Luxury (1922).

Pitts enjoyed her greatest fame in the early 1930s, often starring in B movies and comedy short films, teamed with Thelma Todd. She played secondary parts in many films. Her stock persona (a fretful, flustered, worried spinster) made her instantly recognizable and was often imitated in cartoons and other films. She starred in a number of Hal Roach short films and features, often in partnership with Thelma Todd as two trouble-prone working girls. At Universal she co-starred in a series of feature-length comedies with Slim Summerville. Switching between comedy short films and features, by the advent of sound, she became a specialist in comedy roles.