ZaSu Pitts - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • Mae Questel caricatured Pitts's voice and "oh, dear" mannerisms for the character Olive Oyl for the Fleischer Studios animated cartoon version of Popeye the Sailor.
  • During the 1980s, a large R&B/Soul band based in San Francisco performed under the name "The ZaSu Pitts Memorial Orchestra"
  • She was referenced by the comedic trio Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker in the 1982 police spoof comedy series Police Squad! episode "A Substantial Gift (The Broken Promise)" (first aired on March 4, 1982). In that episode, lead character Frank Drebin exposes a suspect's secret identity by reciting that she was formerly "a brunette hitman known as Zasu Pitts".
  • A street in Las Vegas, Nevada is named after her.
  • Pitts is mentioned in the play and movie version of The Man Who Came to Dinner. The main character, Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley), orders his nurse to "Stop acting like ZaSu Pitts and explain yourself!"
  • In a made-for-TV version of The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which Orson Welles played Whiteside, Pitts was cast as the nurse, Miss Preen, so the remark about "stop acting like ZaSu Pitts" was actually made directly to Pitts herself.

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