ZaSu Pitts A Short Biography The star of “The Solid Gold Cadillac” has probably been seen on motion picture screens and on stage by more people than any other living person. She herself has lost track of all the films in which she has appeared - “It’s at least 500.” Obviously no one could run up a record like that as either star or actor in the normal routine of the profession. The answer is that producers many years ago discovered two things: ZaSu Pitts, sometimes in just a scene or two, can provide the tension-relaxing laughter which may “save” a show; her name is magic at the box office, so that she has been paid as high as $2,500 a day in order that the advertising could say “with ZaSu Pitts.” From this resulted the anomaly of an actress who might be hired for only one scene and drew more pay for one day than the star she supported drew for a week. Miss Pitts, however, has been far from a “bit performer.” Director Eric Von Stroheim called her the “greatest tragedienne of them all” and backed his judgement by starring her in “Greed.” Other pictures in which she has starred include “Pretty Ladies,” “The Legend of Hollywood,” “Casey at the Bat,” “The Wedding March,” “The Hearth of Twenty,” “Poor Relations,” “Finn and Hattie,” “Her First Mate,” “Hello Sister,” “Mr. Skitch,” “They Just Had to Get Married,” and “The Other Half.” To most people, ZaSu Pitts is known primarily as a motion picture actress. The films, of course, have absorbed most of her time. But in recent years she has done a number of full-length roles on stage, each time with the enthusiastic approval of the critics. The first stage role in which she appeared was the of the star of “Her First Murder.” The next year, 1944, she stepped onto a Broadway stage for the first time as the star of “Ramshackle Inn,” a kind of a satire on murder mysteries. Since then she has played the starring role in “The Bat,” “Miss Private Eye” and “The Solid Gold Cadillac,” which she did at Palm Springs before coming to Pasadena to do it with a new Playhouse cast. ZaSu Pitts was born in Parsons, Kan. Very early in her life the family moved to Santa Cruz, California, where her soldier father died and her mother reared the family of two girls and two boys on his pension supplemented by the income from boarders. As she approached working age, Miss Pitts wanted to be a nurse. But her mother wanted her to be an actress and sent her off to Hollywood to break into films. This she did by getting odd bits as an “extra” girl at $5 a day. Her big chance came to her through Frances Marion, a script writer, who saw her and felt sorry for her. The sad-eyed expression which was to make her one of the world’s foremost comediennes paid off for her with a featured role in “The Little Princess” with Mary Pickford. Within a few years of the time she started at $5 a day in pictures, Miss Pitts was earning $1,000 a week as a comedienne. Norman Taurog, famous Paramount director, nominated her along with Edward Everett Horton, Jimmy Durante, Charlie Ruggles, Chic Sale, Edna May Oliver, Ned Sparks, Slim Summerville, Roland Young and Jack Oakie for the “CRA” honor roll. He explained that CRA stood for “Comedy Relief Artists” - those actors upon whom desperate directors could always call for a little film footage to save a show needing a few sure sparks of laughter. Today she is a person of many roles: She is a grandmother with the driving will of a new star. Even