The Egg and I

The Egg and I
May 1947
Universal
Comedy
VHS
C+

Late in the movie, heroine Betty's mother says, "In my opinion, both you and Bob have behaved very stupidly."  Indeed, it's difficult to say who in the couple has been more of an idiot.  At first, the prize would seem to go to Bob (Fred MacMurray), who waits till his wedding night to tell Betty (Claudette Colbert) that he's bought a chicken farm that they'll live on.  The farm turns out to be very rundown, but Bob doesn't understand any of Betty's reservations.  He also doesn't understand her jealousy of the Lauren-Bacall wannabe down the road.  On the other hand, Betty jumps to conclusions when Bob doesn't come for dinner one night (he's buying the wannabe's farm to surprise Betty), and she leaves without talking to him about it.  Not only that, she goes home to mother and rips up all of Bob's letters.  She already knows she's pregnant, but she doesn't tell him till they reconcile, and the baby is a few days old!

What saves the movie is that it's sort of the zeroeth entry in the decade-long Ma and Pa Kettle series.  The Kettles (played by Percy Kilbride and the incomparable Marjorie Main, she nominated for an Oscar for this film) are Northwest hillbillies, with a bunch of kids, roughly a dozen.  Pa is lazy, Ma isn't, and they're an odd couple in other ways, including body types.  (Pa is small and thin, Ma is big).  They're not at all a typical post-war couple, but they became a hit with audiences.  I haven't read the book The Egg and I, but I get the impression that they're very different in print.  The title I assume is a pun on The King and I.

This time Frank O'Connor is one of the "revelers at the country dance."  Vangie Beilby was in A Day at the Races and The Bank Dick.  Jesse Graves was in Citizen Kane.  Victor Potel, who was the newspaper editor in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, plays the Indian Crowbar here, but he would be replaced by several actors as the series went on.  Joseph E. Bernard, Herbert Heywood, and Samuel S. Hinds (as Pa Bailey) were in It's a Wonderful Life.

Richard Long would reprise his role as oldest son Tom Kettle in the first official entry in the series, Ma and Pa Kettle.  Some of the Kettle kids are unnamed in this film but pick up names in MaPK:  thirteen-year-old (in '47) Eugene Persson becoming Ted, eleven-year-old Diane Florentine as Sara, eleven-year-old Teddy Infuhr as Benjamin, Gloria Moore (age unknown but probably teens) as Rosie, and George McDonald (age also unknown) as Henry.  Esther Dale and Isabel O'Madigan would reprise their roles as Mrs. Birdie Hicks and her mother.  (In case you're wondering, there was only a fourteen-year age difference between the actresses, and it shows.)   Bob Perry would be in MaPK, too.