Beauty and
the Bus
Thelma Todd
and Patsy Kelly team for comedy short
Comedy master Hal Roach was a master at putting together
comedy teams and series. Perhaps the least known of these
would be a series of films pairing Thelma Todd and Patsy
Kelly as two young women trying to catch a break in
Depression era America.
Comedically, they're a pretty good team For me, they
primarily summoned thoughts of Laverne and Shirley or Lucy
and Ethel. Still, Todd would be better off dumping Kelly;
as a friend, Todd is a pretty good enemy.
This short film involves the girls winning a beautiful car
in a raffle held at a movie theater. But keeping it,
however, is another matter, especially when Kelly's
take-no-guff-offa-no one personality kicks into action. She
takes offense at everything and is quick to retaliate; she
can escalate any situation into a major confrontation.
I first saw Kelly in an earlier short, The Grand Dame,
where her street smarts
and sassy toughness was played to good humor, but her
character here was too abrasive to be entertaining. Her
short fuse attack mode is more annoying than
entertaining, and Todd's character would be well advised
to just get rid of her.
That said, there are a few good comic moments and laughs,
and the depressing spectacle of seeing the beautiful car
demolished step by step and bit by bit.