He walked in a few minutes later escorting a thin, awkward young woman with enormous eyes and Frances’s first reaction was to be reminded of “a trapped little animal.” But when the man said, “beauty like this should not go unnoticed,” Frances threw him out and admonished the girl, now with tears in her eyes, to pay no attention to him. ZaSu was cast as an extra in the film and then followed the company back to Los Angeles.įrances Marion was finishing the script for Mary’s next film, A Little Princess, when a young man from the casting office called to say he was bringing over “a maiden fairer than Aphrodite” for her consideration. She had found small roles in a few short films when she went to nearby Pleasanton where Mary Pickford was filming Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. They ran a boarding house there, but money was very tight so ZaSu, like so many other young women in the teens, left home to try her luck in the movies. ZaSu was five when her father died and her mother decided to move ZaSu, her two older brothers and herself to Santa Cruz, a small beach town on the Northern California coast. Like so many featured players, she does not have a serious biography, but we know that Mary Pickford and Frances Marion were important in putting her on her path, so I wanted to pull together what I have collected over the years, particularly from previously unpublished memoirs and letters, to present a summary of her story.īorn in Kansas on January 3, 1894, ZaSu (pronounced zay-zoo) was named after her father’s two sisters, Eliza and Susan. Behind that screen personality was a complicated woman whose life reflected the roller coaster that was Hollywood. She developed distinctive and eccentric affections that endeared her to audiences but limited the roles she could play. ZaSu Pitts became a renowned character actress, beginning in the teens and working consistently through the early 1960s.
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