The Egg and I

This movie won't change your life and it isn't the most memorable film I have ever seen. However, it is a lot of fun and a welcome change of pace. It's also a pretty good movie for the entire family.

Fred MacMurray is married to Claudette Colbert (this pairing is a bit hard to believe, but I can live with that). Out of the blue, Fred announces that he's bored with his executive life and has sold everything to buy a chicken farm in the middle of nowhere. But, he and Claudette know nothing about farming and the "dream farm" turns out to be a real dump. Despite all this, Claudette is a real trooper and goes along with it instead of killing Fred in his sleep (which is what my wife kept suggesting as the film began). Along the way, they meet a lot of odd but nice characters, such as Ma and Pa Kettle (later, of the MA AND PA KETTLE series). They also meet a divorced woman who seems to have her sights set on Fred, though he refuses to believe this.

There's a lot more to the film than the last paragraph would indicate, but I don't want to spoil the film. As for the film overall, it evokes a nice light mood and is pretty funny, but also shies away from broad humor--striking a nice balance. The acting and writing are very good as well. In particular, I loved how the film began and ended with Claudette turning to the camera and talking with the audience--this was a cute touch.

Interestingly enough, when you think about it, this movie must have been the basis for the later TV series GREEN ACRES. There are way too many parallels to have this be due to chance. Apart from the city people moving to the country to farm, the home is a dump, the neighbors are VERY quirky and there's even a traveling salesman much like Mr. Haney!

Claudette Colbert & Fred MacMurray star in this screwball comedy; a film that had to be a precursor to "Green Acres"...there's even a Mr. Haney. Although adequate, who steals the show are Ma & Pa Kettle. Marjorie Main is a natural, and because of this, their debut film, The Kettles became a household name.

The Egg and I is based on a best selling book by Betty McDonald concerning the happenings around an urban city dwelling woman, Claudette Colbert playing Betty McDonald, whose husband, Fred MacMurray, gets an agricultural urge after service in World War II. Back to nature so to speak. They both adapt, he a great deal easier than she did and that's part of the plot.

Doing a little research on the movie and book, I found that Betty McDonald was a resident of Seattle and where they moved was not anywhere near hillbilly country, but to a rural part of Washington state. But of course what Universal was doing was giving in to stereotypes. They couldn't make Ma and Pa Kettle and the rest of the characters convincing without transferring The Egg and I to an Ozark/Appalachian background.

Knowing that it does make me curious as to how the Kettles and the rest of the rustic neighbors were portrayed in the book.

Still somebody apparently knew what they were doing because The Egg and I with a built in audience of those who had already bought Betty McDonald's book cleaned up at the box office. And Percy Kilbride and Marjorie Main as Ma and Pa Kettle and their growing family became such a hit it spawned a series of money making films for Universal Studios for the next decade.

How popular were the Kettles? I remember back as a lad watching an episode of Gomer Pyle who when he got a pass to go into town took in a revival film of the Ma and Pa Kettle series. In places like Mayberry, North Carolina the Kettles attained a cult status. Marjorie Main got a Best Supporting Actress nomination, but lost to Celeste Holm for Gentlemen's Agreement. She and Percy Kilbride played variations on their Kettle characters in most of the remaining films in their respective careers.

Still it's Fred and Claudette's film despite the Kettles and both settle into roles very comfortable for both of them. Next to the Kettles, the supporting player who comes off best is Louise Allbritton, the mantrap neighbor who's got her eye on Fred MacMurray. You will also like Billy House as the rotund peddler with everything, even himself for the needy housewife.

Rural Washington state had to wait until the Nineties for a film set in that part of the country. It was hardly a flattering picture that Tobias Wolff painted of where he grew up in This Boy's Life. No rustics like the Kettles in that Leonardo DiCaprio/Robert DeNiro film.

Probably the most successful imitator of The Egg and I had to be the CBS classic series Green Acres. Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor were even more out of place in the Ozarks than Colbert and MacMurray were. They too dealt with a collection of rustics that looked like they stepped from the cast of The Egg and I.

They even made Green Acres a success without the Kettles.

I first watched this movie about 5 years ago, and I enjoyed it then. I wanted to watch it again, because I'd since seen a few movies with Marjorie Main. I enjoyed her performance, but it was the role played by Claudette Colbert that blew me away. I thought she was better here than in "It Happened One Night", when she won an Oscar. Ma and Pa Kettle stole the show the last time I watched it, but this time around, I was more interested in the lives of Betty and Bob MacDonald. Ms. Colbert and Fred MacMurray had such an easy-going, natural interaction, which I overlooked on first viewing. Isn't that the sign of good acting? When you don't even notice they're acting?

This charming, lively and atmospheric sojourn into the country is one of the most famous and influential of all "rustic" films. Like "Mr. Blandings Builds His dream House" and "George Washington Slept Here", Betty MacDonald's "The Egg and I" tells the cautionary tale of a city dweller and his wife trying to establish a new life form themselves far from the city's amenities. Usually one partner is more enthusiastic about the relocation than is the other--in this case, a young wife played by Claudette Colbert--while the mate is hell-bent on leaving the city's inconveniences behind--in this case Fred MacMurray. The film has a deceptively simple plot-line. In pursuit of the goal of running an egg-producing farm, MacMurray drags his new wife into the country; the remainder of the film comprises three plot lines: 1. The way they are rooked, helped, charmed and appalled by their bucolic neighbors, especially Ma and pa kettle played for the first time on the screen my Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride; 2. Involvements with a gorgeous neighbor (Louise Allbritton) whom Colbert thinks is a rival for her husband's affections; and 3. Difficulties with a very old and run-down physical property owing to long-term prior neglect, bad weather, etc. This bare summary of events I suggest captures the essence of the storyline rather succinctly; but it also omits the hysteria of Colbert's reactions, her distaste at first for the entire project, and the genial atmosphere of "what next" that permeates all the couple's dealings with nature, their neighbors and their own negotiations about their new marriage and the terms on which it is to be lived. Unlike many incompetent later so-called comedies, this is a true comedy--something that cannot end badly for the participants if they physically persevere; and it is quite realistic, if broadly mounted. How many other films can you the viewer recall which introduces Ma and Pa Kettle, a slinky blond egg-ranch owner, a 300 pound ladies man, a run-down chicken ranch, a college-trained hillbilly engineer and a succession of incompetent workmen? Frank Skinner provided suitable comedic music; the film was directed by veteran Chester Erskine, from a story and screenplay he adopted from the Macdonald novel along with Fred F. Finkelhoffe. The two produced also along with Leonard Goldstein, and they produced an instant classic and a box-office smash. Milton Krasner supplied a consistent cinematography, helped along by a very fine production design by Bernard Herzbrun and inventive set decorations by Oliver Emert and Russell A. Gausman. The fine cast is headed by Fred MacMurray as a believable Bob Macdonald, and Claudette Colbert, very powerful as always and only a bit too old for the part. As the rival egg rancher, Louise Allbritton is cultured, and brilliant as usual. Billy House as the amorous Mr. Reed, Elisabeth Risdon as Betty's mother, Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride and Richard Long as the Kettles are all very much up to their parts, which in lesser hands might have turned into caricatures. others in the well-chosen cast include Samuel S. Hinds as the Sheriff, Ida Moore, Fuzzy Knight, Isabel O'Madigan, Esther Dale, Donald MacBride and John Berkes. It is hard to say enough nice things about the consistent style of this B/W treasure. What makes it work apart from the straightforward direction and the sincere professional actors I suggest is the categorical theme--Betty (Colbert) finally wanting her marriage to work, rather than her husband's equally legitimate desire to make a go of the egg ranch project he has always wanted to head, even if it means making his wife uncomfortable for a while. This is a film many admire, myself among them, and many more like even better that they admire it. It is a fine autumn film any night you want some genuinely-earned laughter.