[Slapsticon, the greatest film event of the year, has been canceled this year.  To grieve it, I am devoting the entire month of July to posts about slapstick comedy.]

I love Thelma Todd.

A lot of others do too. There’s quite a cult built up around this lady–being a luscious blonde who died young under mysterious circumstances will tend to do that. But even if none of that salacious stuff were true, she’d be a compelling figure for the simple reason that she is funny. There’s a lot of discussion today about the rise of female comedians, and the extent to which a woman can be funny while also being traditionally beautiful and feminine. It’s nice to remember this is not a recent debate, and that generations before Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Anna Farris, or Kristen Wiig, there were women like Thelma Todd proudly standing up next to Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, and Groucho Marx (to name a few of the male comedians she upstaged).

In celebration of Todd’s legacy I want to pick apart a single film of hers to see how it works. I’ve chosen my personal favorite among her shorts, ASLEEP IN THE FEET.

It is, naturally, a Hal Roach production. Much has been said about how the Todd-Pitts comedies and their successors the Todd-Kelly comedies were an attempt by Roach to gin up a female counterpart to Laurel and Hardy. This is true, but it speaks to a larger phenomenon. The reason there was a Laurel and Hardy in the first place was because of Roach’s habit of pairing comedians up. If anyone showed promise singly, they’d be joined to someone else.

Is Snub Pollard a funny guy? Then pair him up with Sammy Morrison. Is Sammy Morrison starting to outshine him? Then surround Sammy with a bunch of kids and call them Our Gang! And on it goes.

Thelma had been exceptional as Charley Chase’s costar, and Chase openly lobbied for them to be formally paired off (on screen that is– they were not a romantic couple). Roach figured it was leaving money on the table to let a potential star like Thelma serve as support for a comic who clearly could sell movies with or without her, so he spun her off into her own series–with a costar of her own. To fill that role, Roach bought an established Broadway comedienne, Zasu Pitts. She didn’t come cheap, though, and when the time came to renegotiate her contract she asked for more money than Roach was willing to shell out. Which is why the later films found Todd working with blunderbuss Patsy Kelly.

Having two comediennes was key to making this concept work, because for all the talk about a “female Laurel and Hardy,” that isn’t how they functioned at all. Thelma plays a responsible and competent adult–not a dizzy blonde. If anything, she’s too responsible–she leans towards being a wet blanket, always trying to tamp down the havoc.

And that’s where the costar comes in–the havoc. Zasu Pitts is no fool, either–but she’s an outsider, a fish out of water. She seems unsure of normal human social behavior and uncomfortable with what she does understand. She’s physically clumsy, yes, but it goes beyond that into a sort of emotional clumsiness. Through no malice of her own, she will thwart every one of Thelma’s best-laid plans.

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In a sense, Thelma was the straight man of the duo. But I fear that’s too reductive an analysis. Charley Chase built his comedy out of the misfit between his character’s earnest desire to be a normal middle-class guy, and the obstacles he unintentionally put up in his own way. Thelma works a similar line, just that her exasperated reactions are directed towards the obstacles produced by her friend. And since Zasu is her friend, Thelma has to put up with all the attendant disruptions–rolling her eyes all the way.

Thelma and Zasu are not allowed to cook in their room, and their ingenious efforts to prepare food secretly are fun, if familiar. This is not so far from Laurel and Hardy keeping a goat in their room, for example–just a little less ridiculous. But it sets up an idea you’d never find in Laurel and Hardy picture.

They want to earn $20 to spare their next door neighbor from being evicted. Now that’s something. In most comedies of this type, the setup would be having the comedians need cash for themselves. But the girls are not the ones facing imminent eviction–the absurd journey they’re about to embark on is on behalf of an altruistic errand!

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Another neighbor, Anita Garvin, suggests that they could easily earn $20 as “taxi dancers” at the local dance club. We’ll come to what this means in a moment–first let’s linger on Ms. Garvin. She had paid her dues as a supporting actress for nearly every comedy outfit there was until Stan Laurel recognized in her underrated gifts and found her a home at Hal Roach. She was the star of Roach’s first experiment with a female comedy team, paired off with the diminutive pixie Marion Byron.

Here’s how the whole “taxi dancers” thing works: men buy tickets from the club owner (here played by Roach stalwart Billy Gilbert), and then “spend” them to buy dancers with the women of their choice. Those women then redeem the tickets at the end of the night for their cut of the money. The more popular a girl is, the more tickets she’ll get, the more she makes.

If the arrangement sounds vaguely like prostitution, with women trading sexual allure for cash, well, you’re not alone in thinking that. Enter some sourpuss moral crusaders to evaluate if the club can be allowed to stay open.

I’ve skipped over a bit, a certain important detail that will give this sequence its energy. And it has to do with the characters that Thelma and Zasu play.

Thelma Todd is of course one stunning looking woman. No matter what absurdities she is called upon to do, she can’t help but look fantastic while doing it. So the films never try to hide that fact, and instead emphasize it. The films constantly sexualize her (having her get undressed is a sort of visual catch-phrase–she strips in nearly every one) but that sexualization is never coming from her. There’s always an interesting tension between the lustful looks she inspires in others, and her own “can’t a girl get a moment’s peace?” responses.

Because of this unresolved sexual tension built up around Thelma, the films inevitably off-load a lot of it onto Zasu. Zasu the emotional clutz. So, for example, if one of the girls is going to get engaged, it’ll be Zasu.

Let’s watch how this dynamic plays out in ASLEEP IN THE FEET.

Thelma’s arrival at the dance hall is disruptive, because all the men want to get with her. One guy, an enormous lummox, monopolizes her time and is so aggressively irritating, she retreats into the bathroom to hide.

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Meanwhile, Zasu has been advised that the key to making money on the dance floor is to be as sexy as possible. But whereas Thelma is sexy without trying, Zasu turns it into a self-conscious project.

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Remember, though, that the moral police are on hand to make sure no funny business is going on. Zasu’s ridiculous attempts to act sexy are taking place precisely when everyone else has been ordered to be as tame and decent as possible. And of course she decides that of all the peple there, her ha-cha act should be principally directed at the Puritan fusspot with a badge.

It’s a brilliant triangulation of conflict: one woman suppressing her sex appeal while another inflates her own, a roomful of people trying to be one thing while one among them missed the memo, and the kicker is how the cop, a social misfit himself, is actually enjoying Zasu’s misdirected flirtation.

If anything, the problem with ASLEEP IN THE FEET is how it gives up right when it’s getting warmed up, but the closing gag–a literal interpretation of the phrase “blackout gag”–is simultaneously violent, transgressive, and warmly human.

18 minutes in heaven