FLUTTERING HANDS

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1935, Page 20 (Supplement)

FLUTTERING HANDS

FAMOUS GESTURE OF ZASU PITTS. IMITATION OF SCHOOLMISTRESS. [ Charlie* Chaplin once admitted he drew his inimitable duck-footed waddle from the drunken stagger of a little Cockney huckster in London. Zasu Pitts, the eccentric female at whose t image thousands laugh daily, admits her I character is an out-and-out steal. ‘ Recently she revealed where she had first found the idea of her best-known gesture, that helpless fluttering of her hands that spells alternately confusion ! and despair. In Santa Clara, where Zasu’s family : moved from Kansas when she was still, i a schoolgirl, there was a high-school ' teacher who could not abide the sound |of chalk on a blackboard. It seemed I to make her physically weak when the I pupils, doing their sums, pressed too hard on the board. At each squeak 'of the chalk she would cringe and her hands would fly to her shoulders in mute appeal. The motion never failed to bring a chuckle from the class and Zasu used to delight her schoolmates ■ with imitations of the distracted inj structor.

i Some years later, when she was given her first comedy role in Hollywood, Zasu remembered the laughs this bit of business used to bring and she incorporated it in a screen characterisation. She has | been using it ever since.