This past week I attended the 35th and last ever Cinefest. I left on Wednesday the 18 th and got there that evening to catch up with old friends. It was a wonderful way to start off a film festival that began in I had to miss a few when my kids were young, but other than those years, I have been a loyal Cinefest-ite.
We meet Bunny ZaSu Pitts at her job, running a drop-off daycare at a popular department store. She is the only one supervising and she must have something like 40 children to mind at one point. Pretty crazy. The dialogue is such fun with lots of double entendres. We all notice one particular child in the group, Shirley Temple, about a year before she became the biggest child star ever.
Meanwhile, Ronald is with his mother at the department store buying a winter coat. What makes this relationship extra ridiculous is that mother and son look about the same age. In fact, Crews was only 13 years older than Summerville and although he and ZaSu were 40 and 39 respectively, they looked somewhat older compared to people in this day and age.
After meeting with nervous store manager, Mr. Rosemountain Alexander Carr during the coat-buying negotiations, Ronald wanders off to stumble across the nursery. Barty, being a little person who started out in vaudeville at the age of five, was actually nine when he played this role and went on to play usually bratty children until In Lawyer Man , there was the tell-tale cigar going from a placid position to erect when William Powell notices an attractive female pass by.
The same trick was used here, but with a thermometer while Ronald is getting his temperature taken by his mother. Lots of fun with Ronald and Bunny succeeding in getting married and trying to have a private honeymoon—but mother is always in tow, even in the adjoining hotel room. There were a number of themes in my mind over the course of the four days.
