'Sealskins' is greater than its parts

Sealskins (1932)
Starring: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts, Bert Sprotte, Charlie Hall, Frank Austin, and Billy Gilbert
Directors: Morey Lightfoot and Gil Pratt
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

The Royal Seal of Siberia has been stolen, and a secretary with dreams of being a newspaper reporter (Todd) thinks she has a lead on where the thieves are hiding it. With her reluctant friend (Pitts) in tow, she sets out to crack the case and get the scoop. Unfortunately, the trail leads them to a creepy boarding house full of even creepier characters...

"Sealskins" is a comedy of errors, a spoof of the 'old dark house genre' and a spoof of the 'newspaper reporter detective' B-movie genre, all wrapped into a single package. Individually, the jokes and bits in the film aren't all that great--some are outright duds--but the way they are blended together add up to a very cute and highly amusing film.

What makes this work, first and foremost, is the sense of warmth and friendship between the two main characters; it's fully believable that ZaSu Pitts' character would let herself be dragged along on what is at best a fool's errand and at worst truly dangerous, because of this sense of camaraderie between them. If this same story had been done with Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly (who would replace Pitts as co-star in this series when Pitts' contract expired and producer Roach didn't want to meet her demand for more pay in order to re-up), it would have been an absolute disaster.

Another element that puts this film among the better Thelma Todd-starring shorts is the script. Unlike so many of these films, it's a complete story, with a begging, a middle, and an end. Also, it stays focused on Thelma and ZaSu, instead of letting them get crowded out of their own story by the wide array of interesting characters and subplots crammed in. (And there are plenty of interesting characters in this one--from the seal-nappes, to Thelma's rival at the newspaper, to any one of the residents of the spooky boarding house--that could easily been given more schtick to do.)

The only incidental character I wish had been given a little more screen-time is a circus sideshow Voodoo Doctor whom our heroines encounter while running around the house and inexplicably frightened by. I would have loved to see him out of costume and be somehow involved with the film's resolution to show that he was just a guy in a costume before. (But that could be my 21st century mindset shining through.)

"Sealskins" is one of 17 films that Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts starred in together, and they can all be had on in a single two-disc DVD collection. The print from which it was taken is a bit more worn than most (or maybe not as much effort was put into restoring it?), but the imperfections are no so bad so as to make the action hard to follow. I have three more films left to watch before I've seen every one in the set, but I already feel like I've gotten more than my money's worth out the collection.



Trivia: Toward the end of film, the newspaper editor calls Thelma Todd's character "Toddy". This was Todd's real-life nickname.