Red Noses (1932) is the seventh of forty-one two-reel pre-code comedies produced by Hal Roach in the Girlfriends series. The plot of this particular adventure finds our heroines Miss Pitts (ZaSu Pitts) and Miss Todd (Thelma Todd) home sick with colds. In an desperate attempt to get them back to work, their boss books them an afternoon at a high-end Turkish Bath. Once there, slapstick mayhem ensues.
Red Noses is, as far as production values are concerned, a typical low-budget Hal Roach affair. As a producer Roach churned out two-reel quickies at an assembly line pace and it shows in all of his productions. The sets are dingy and cheap looking but what really suffers is the comedy. Pitts and Todd possessed a charming chemistry and a unique knack for making any dialogue snap. Where these films falter is in the staging and photographing of slapstick routines. With few rehearsals and a tight schedule these sequences of physical comedy often play with a thud. The cultural longevity of the Girlfriends films is down to the onscreen relationship of Todd and Pitts.
But unlike Roach’s other two-reeler franchises, the Girlfriends films discovered a new cultural resonance within the Queer community. Red Noses in particular lends itself to a Queer reading. Red Noses opens with the two women in bed, griping to each other like an old married couple. In fact, most of their exchanges rely on this dynamic that is both intimate and adversarial. Pitts and Todd derive a lot of humor by playing their characters as almost literally inseparable (Pitts always instinctively goes to follow Todd into her changing room, her bath, etc.). As the title of the series suggests, Pitts and Todd are playing Girlfriends.
The Queer coding in Red Noses only intensifies once the women arrive at the baths. Once separated into neighboring changing booths, Pitts squeezes Todd’s buttocks through the cloth partition and asks “Is that you Thelma?”. Later the more gender ambiguous Pitts will don men’s clothes and attempt to rescue Todd from a mud slinging masseuse. The original owner of these men’s clothes, a fubsy fellow, will pursue Pitts with his drawers drooping in symbolic emasculation. Ultimately Red Noses ends with Pitts in a man’s suit strolling down the crowded city street with Todd on her arm wearing only a sarong (and this description doesn’t even get into the vibrator scene).
Even if Roach never intended Todd and Pitts to be Queer women, the resulting images suggest that they very much are from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. Red Noses isn’t a revolutionary film or a good comedy by any means, but as a Queer document it is meaningful if not a little funnier. Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts are Queer icons who deserve more popular recognition for their work in the Girlfriends films.
