Mother Carey's Chickens

I agree with most of the other comments that this is an enjoyable but not very noteworthy film. Keeler was surprisingly dull here; she should have stuck to musicals. What I really enjoyed, though, were some scenes with the little boy. The director simply turned him loose with some very well-chosen props and let the camera roll. The results are a child being a child--curious, mischievous, determined--and a very charming and unusual addition to the film they prove to be! The wallpaper scene is priceless.

In the 1890s, widow Margaret Carey (Fay Bainter) struggles to keep a roof over the heads of her four children. When they finally have a steady home, a scheming couple (Margaret Hamilton, Harvey Clark) try to take it away from them. Meanwhile the two daughters (Anne Shirley, Ruby Keeler) fall in love with the same man (James Ellison).

I'm always up for an Anne Shirley movie. She's one of the most under-appreciated actresses of her era and one of the prettiest, too. It's nice to see Ruby Keeler outside of a musical but it's easy to see why her career went nowhere when she wasn't tapping. After this she didn't do another movie for three years. Fay Bainter is wonderful as the saintly Mother Carey. It's too bad she isn't in the movie more in the second half. Margaret Hamilton and Walter Brennan make any movie better and that holds true here. This is the film debut of child actor Donnie Dunagan. That name might not mean much to a lot of you but Universal horror fans will recognize him as the heavily-accented boy from Tower of London and Son of Frankenstein, both also directed by this film's director Rowland V. Lee. He has lots of precocious lines and funny moments. He's not the best little actor but he still manages to steal the picture. Charming Americana that provides some laughs and tears. It's not perfect but if you like movies like Meet Me in St. Louis, you should enjoy this.

My guess is that the Walt Disney studio did not want this version of Mother Carey's Chickens competing with it's remake entitled Summer Magic so this film is rarely seen. Both versions are nice entertainment.

Maybe because it's a little closer to the 1898 setting that this version is a bit more realistic. In the Disney version the character of the father played by Ralph Morgan is eliminated, in that one Mother Carey is already a widow. Here with Morgan's death in the Spanish American War we see just what kind of genteel poverty the Careys have been driven into.

Katherine Hepburn reportedly bought out her contract so that she wouldn't have to do this film. Watching it I kind of understand the thinking at RKO. Probably the studio thought this would be a return to one of Kate's most beloved roles from Little Women. There sure is a lot of similarity. I can also understand Hepburn's thinking that this would be a step back not forward for her career. In any event Ruby Keeler who had just been let go at Warner Brothers did her part.

Fay Bainter in the year she won the Best Supporting Actress Award for Jezebel plays Mother Carey who holds her brood together through all kinds of financial and romantic strife. It's a nice role for her and she does well by it. Walter Brennan who hailed from the rural New England area in real life that Mother Carey's Chickens is set in has one of his patented folksy rustics as the local storekeeper.

Though Margaret Hamilton's most famous role was a year away as the Wicked Witch of the West aka Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz, here she has a part that makes the witch look like Mother Teresa. She and her milquetoast husband want the old house the Careys have been forced to move in and are willing to do just about anything to get them out. Of course they don't reckon with Carey resourcefulness.

James Ellison and Frank Albertson play a nice pair of suitors for the Carey girls Anne Shirley and Ruby Keeler. Younger Carey brother Jackie Moran has some young romantic problems of his own with Virginia Weidler. But coming close to stealing the film is little Donnie Dunnigan playing Peter Carey. His scene where he tries to 'help' with the hanging of the wallpaper is priceless. In fact watching this I think I know where Leo McCarey got the idea in The Bells of St. Mary's to just turn the camera loose on a gang of little children doing a nativity play as a kind of improvisation. I don't think you could have scripted little Donnie's scenes for this.

Hopefully I'll get to see Summer Magic soon and compare. Hopefully you will all get to see both versions.

MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS (RKO Radio, 1938), directed by Rowland V. Lee, from the novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin, is a rarely seen family movie in which the title might be at fault in having little or no recognition. In fact, the background as of how this movie came to be is much better known than the motion picture itself. First off, this was supposed to be another variation of RKO Radio dealing with literary classics. The studio did very well five years earlier with Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN (1933) starring Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett. Now with numerous hits and misses over the years, RKO Radio was inspired in placing Hepburn in this production, along with Ginger Rogers, whom she had recently appeared successfully in STAGE DOOR (1937) to play her sister. Hepburn bought out her contract and Rogers, of course, bowed out as well. The final result was replacing its proposed major stars with featured performers. Anne Shirley, a resident RKO actress mostly in the "B" picture unit, stepped in for the role of Nancy, and Ruby Keeler, a tap dancing sweetheart of Warner Brothers musicals from 1933 to 1937, surprisingly selected in the second lead as Katharine, making this her only non-musical performance. She's quite effective in period costumes and long dark curls. Although this didn't become a two hour production on a lavish scale, at 82 minutes, with some sudden fade-outs indicating cut scenes, especially towards the middle, the movie on the whole is relatively good.

Set during the Spanish-American War during the late 1890s in the state of Rhode Island, the story centers upon the Carey family: Captain John Carey (Ralph Morgan), Margaret, his wife (Fay Bainter); and their four children whom Mother "Hen" calls her "chickens," young adults Nancy (Anne Shirley) and Katherine (Ruby Keeler); teenager Gilbert (Jackie Moran), and little Peter (Donnie Donegan, making his movie debut), the youngest and most troublesome of the bunch. All the Careys want is a permanent place to live, after many years of moving from house to house. Captain Carey leaves his family after only spending a day with them while on military leave, and sometime later, on his birthday, by which the family celebrates during his absence, a telegram reaches them reading that Carey was killed in action. Mother Carey strives to keep her family together in spite of some hardships and financial problems. Their wealthy Aunt Bertha (Alma Kruger) agrees to take them in, but the family refuses to ever leave their mother. Later, the Careys "claim" a mansion which Mr. Popham (Walter Brennan) rents to them at $60 a year. During the course of the story, Nancy and Katherine each fall in love with Ralph Thurston (James Ellison), a town schoolteacher, who wins one of them while the other becomes interested in loving another, Doctor Thomas Hamilton (Frank Albertson), the son of the real estate man (George Irving) who arrives to evict the Careys when the homestead is put up for sale because of unpaid taxes, with the intention of selling the home to the prospective buyers, Pauline and Clarence Fuller (Margaret Hamilton and Harvey Clark) who intend on moving in with the intrusive Pauline not taking no for an answer.

The supporting cast consists of child actress Virginia Weidler as Lally Joy, a little girl in pig tails who not only wears her shoes on backwards, but has a crush on the teen-aged Gilbert Carey to a point of becoming his shadow; Phyllis Kennedy (who sometimes looks like comedian Judy Canova) as the Carey family cook; and Lucille Ward as Mrs. Popham. Of all the actors in this photo-play, little Donnie Donegan not only gets plenty of screen time in being naughty, but enough closeups to give indication that this little boy must be related to either the director or the person behind the camera. Donegan even gets the film's final fadeout. Not quite the Jackie Coogan-type when it comes to talent, he is best known today for his sizable role in Rowland V. Lee's upcoming project, THE SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (Universal, 1939) starring Basil Rathbone, in which Donegan plays another Peter, but with the last name of Frankenstein.

More amusing than dramatic, especially when the Carey's attempt to discourage their prospective home buyers (Hamilton and Clark) by pretending the house to be haunted, MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS comes off better with its casting. After viewing this production on numerous occasions, it's apparent that Hepburn and Rogers would have been all wrong in their parts. Anne Shirley became the ideal choice as Nancy and Ruby Keeler is surprisingly effective as the other sister, but this is Fay Bainter's show, Hollywood's resident mother and title character. Her mother to daughter talks about first love come off remarkable well.

Revamped by Walt Disney as SUMMER MAGIC (1963), with Dorothy McGuire in the Bainter role, comparing these two adaptations makes it clear that, in spite of added songs, color and the Disney charm, along with eliminating the father, thus, introducing Mother Carey as a widow, both films are so different that it's hard to compare them as basis from the same story.

A suitable movie especially for Mother's Day, MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS, which formerly played on American Movie Classics for several years prior to 1993, can be seen occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. (***)

Widowed Fay Bainter and her two sons and two daughters move into a house and turn it into a boarding house. When the house is sold from under them, what will they do?

Katherine Hepburn was originally considered for a role in this movie, which looks like a follow-up to Little Women. She turned down the role and bought out her contract. As the movie exists, with direction by Rowland Lee, it was a wise decision. Although filled with good incidents and some fine supporting players -- Walter Brennan, Margaret Hamilton, Alma Kruger, Ralph Morgan -- there is no clear sense of more to it than that. In tone it seems caught between a situation comedy and nostalgia for the simpler days of the Mauve Decade, with a strong taste of the necessity of having enough money to get by on. Daughters Anne Shirley and Ruby Keeler are cute enough, and sons Jackie Moran and Donnie Dunagan charming enough. However, while good enough on its own terms, it's little more than that.