Ma and Pa Kettle

Ma and Pa Kettle
April 1, 1949
Universal
Comedy
VHS
B-

While I won't say this is a rollicking comedy, it has a certain charm, partly from its focus on the Kettles (who stole The Egg and I), partly from oldest boy Tom's romance, and partly from the culture clash of the family with post-war prosperity.  Of course, Pa is lazy, but he does happen to win a contest, with first prize a pre-fab house chockful of modern gadgets.  (He just wanted the free tobacco pouch for entering.)  So, he, Ma, and the fifteen kids, including Tom (just home from college), move from the farm to the new place.  Ma cooks a roast pig in the new oven, which is only supposed to take two or three minutes!  Pa has to deal with remote-controlled radio and TV, as well as sun-lamps in the bathroom.  Meanwhile, Tom has met a pretty but opinionated reporter named Kim.  They have chemistry together, and I like that she has a career.  (I think she gives it up in the sequels though.)

I used to have all the Kettle movies, but it looks like I'm missing the next two and the last two.  (Kilbride would drop out due to poor health, and the last two have "Kettles" in the titles rather than "Ma and Pa Kettle.")  This first entry establishes the formula of course, so that the theme tune (taken from The Egg and I), the opening credits, and some other elements would stay the same through much of the series.  Charles Lamont would direct about half of the sequels.

We actually get a role call of the kids, so thanks to IMDB, here's a list:

1. Tom
2. oldest girl Rosie (played by Gloria Moore, who'd appear in Singin' in the Rain as a chorus girl)
3. Ted (15-year-old Eugene Persson)
4. Danny (14-year-old Dale Belding, who'd be in a couple of the entries I'm missing)
5. Sara (13-year-old Diane Florentine, who was nameless in The Egg and I)
6. Benjamin (12-year-old Teddy Infuhr)
7. Nancy (12-year-old Elana Schreiner)
8. Sally (12-year-old Donna Leary)
9. Billy (played by a 9-year-old)
10. Eve (8-year-old Beverly Mook)
11. Susie (8-year-old Melinda Plowman, who'd go on to Cary Grant's Monkey Business)
12. Willie (8-year-old George Arlen)
13. Ruthie (Margaret Brown, age unknown but she did appear on the Dobie Gillis show in '61)
14. Henry (George McDonald, age unknown, who was in The Egg)
15. George (played by a child whose age in unknown but he would be MaPK Go to Town).

(Oddly enough, Ma and Pa have been together thirty years, but most of their kids seem to be under seventeen.  Maybe that includes the years of courtin'.)

Emory Parnell, who was Mr. Tuerck in Miracle of Morgan's Creek, is almost unrecognizable as Billy Reed.  Esther Dale and Isabel O'Madigan are back as Birdie Hicks and her mother, with Birdie still holding a grudge against Ma for winning the quilt contest in The Egg.  (Ma used the prize money to send Tom to college, so four years apparently have passed.)  Rex Lease would continue to play the sheriff in later entries.  Nolan Leary, who plays the minister here, gets demoted to church usher in Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair.  Harry Chesire would also be in Fair.

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.