Pitts quickly set about defining a career for herself, working in in one-reel comedies and honing her craft of subtle gestures and reaction. Bill Takacs, in his surprisingly deft IMDB biography of the actress, explained that soon after Pitts’ departure from Santa Cruz she was discovered by “pioneer screenwriter Frances Marion, who got her work, though in small, obscure parts, in vehicles for such Paramount stars as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.” Her big break was with the great, yet misunderstood director Erich Von Stroheim, who cast her in his infamous four-hour epic Greed (1923). Giffen wrote that, “From an artistic standpoint, this was undoubtedly the high point of Pitts’ career.” Pitts would go on churning out both dramatic and comedic roles, although she would have wanted more of the former. She was famously cast in All Quiet on the Western Front, but after test audiences could not help but laugh at her intended pathos, the “devastated director had all the scenes with the mother re-shot with another actress for the final film, and Zasu Pitts was typecast as a comedienne for good.” Up until her death in 1963, Pitts was still working in assorted radio and television shows, with her last film being the Stanley Kramer classic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

   

    Although Pitts did not make many films within her hometown of Santa Cruz, she did act in a film called Thunder Mountain, which did come to the county and utilize some local spots, most glaring being the Pogonip field. Unfortunately, the film did not survive, but there are amazing images from the film’s production in the Preston Sawyer collection. Pitts might not have accomplished all that she wanted in her career, yet her filmography remains a fantastic list of moving images, drama and comedy alike.