Placide et Zoé

While I am sure most people watch the Ma & Pa Kettle films to laugh at the exploits of the Kettle clan, I have a very different reaction. When I watch Ma keeping house and fussin' about, it seems like for once I am seeing my own mother on film! The filthy and dilapidated house sure reminds me of home! These characters were first introduced in the Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert film "The Egg & I". These supporting characters were so popular that it resulted in an Oscar nomination for Marjorie Main and a series of films as well as a TV series!

The film starts with the town council discussing whether or not to condemn the Kettle place. After all, Pa Kettle NEVER does a bit of work and the home has been falling apart all around the Kettles for years. However, before they can take action, the council learns that Pa just won a contest--and a new home is the prize! They hope that maybe the entire annoying brood might just be moving! Their oldest son (Richard Long) looks and acts absolutely nothing like the rest of the family--he's sort of like Marilyn in "The Munsters"!

On the way back home from completing college, he meets a reporter on the train and he lies to her about his fancy rich family. Little does he know that she'll be interviewing his family because of the contest win--and she'll soon see what sort of genteel childhood he really had! Naturally, they soon fall in love.

As for the new house, it's as ultra-modern as you can get in 1949--and some of the stuff even looks pretty space-age today. Unfortunately, the place baffles the Kettles, as there are so many gadgets and do-dads that it's awfully confusing. The juxtaposition of the back-woods Kettles with this streamlined home is obviously supposed to be as extreme as possible and it leads to some funny results--though I would agree with the other reviewer who said the humor is pretty gentle and not laugh-inducing. And, when it comes to this modern home, it reminds me strongly of the Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd cartoon "Design for Leaving".

All in all, this is an entertaining and slight film. While the film certainly does not fall in the 'must see' category, it is fun and a pleasant little movie that makes you look forward to the next in the series.

By the way, the odd old lady on the train who sits there talking with her dead husband is pretty ironic. I read a while back that Ms. Main herself was famous for talking on the set to her dead husband! In some cases, they'd have to re-shoot scenes because she'd just start having conversations with him out of the blue! Apparently she was a very, very eccentric lady!! Also of interest (and intense speculation) was her relationship with fellow actress Spring Byington.

After cracking up "The Egg and I" (1947), scene-stealers Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride went on a roll for Universal International. Beginning in their own movie series, "Ma and Pa Kettle" are about to be thrown out of their untidy abode. The family is saved when Mr. Kilbride wins a tobacco company contest, with the slogan "For smokin' or chewin' King Henry's most fittin', it smells awful good and it's dandy for spittin!" The Kettles move into their grand prize, a "prefabricated model house of the future." The ABC (good name for a TV station) television cameras document their amusing arrival.

Returning from college, handsome Richard Long (as Tom) re-joins his backwoodsy family. Along the way, he finds love with pretty Meg Randall (as Kim Parker), who is writing a series of magazine articles on the Kettles and their fifteen frightening "childrun". The plot thickens when family nemesis Esther Dale (as Birdie) discovers Kilbride may have plagiarized his winning slogan. Thanks to its appealing old cast, the film is a winner, too. Lovely old Ida Moore (as Emily) and "Albert" make a point with charm (on the train); and, the entire effort works as a satire on the effects of modernization on society.

******* Ma and Pa Kettle (4/1/49) Charles Lamont ~ Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, Richard Long, Meg Randall

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF MA AND PA KETTLE (originally titled simply MA AND PA KETTLE during original release, apparently "Further" was a reissue title or for television) launches the popular movie series starring the scene-stealing characters from the 1947 Claudette Colbert/Fred MacMurray blockbuster THE EGG AND I, Ma and Pa Kettle (Colbert and MacMurray's characters are never mentioned in any of the MPK films). Often mistakenly thought to be set in the rural South, the Kettle movies are actually if discreetly set in rural Washington state(note the local paper shown is from Seattle) so technically the Kettles are not hillbillies as is usually presumed (the later film THE KETTLES OF THE OZARKS to the contrary, in which their location was indeed shifted to the South.)

The local community is in an uproar over the state of the dilapidated Kettle home and vote to condemn it and force the Kettles to move (poetic license as the Kettles clearly live outside of city limits in a secluded area and a dump like theirs would hardly have been an uncommon site in a rural community in the 1940's.) Ready for a fight, Ma arms her brood with slingshots and peashooters and she herself totes a more menacing shotgun but the matter is instantly settled when Pa turns out to have won grand prize in a slogan contest for a tobacco company, a fully furnished modern home (remarkably one which just so happens to have been built in their own county and one close enough to hear dynamite explosions at the Kettle fortress). The community now raises the Kettles to local heroes, inciting the wrath of local shrew Birdie Hicks (played by the wonderful Esther Dale) who is out to prove Pa didn't concoct the slogan himself.

Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride as sensational as the Kettles. Ms. Main, on the eve of 60, plays mom to a brood of school-aged kids but her performance is so perfect it seems a minor quibble. Kilbride manages to make a lazy, self-centered character appealing, no small feat either. Dashing young Richard Long as the oldest son is extremely appealing as the lone sensitive, intelligent Kettle and the cast is dotted with many delightful character actors in support, including several who were also in THE EGG AND I, notably Ms. Dale as mean old bat Birdie Hicks and the delightfully impish Ida Moore as Emily. I particularly enjoyed elderly character actress Isabel O'Madigan as Birdie's parrot of a mother. Ms. O'Madigan was a supporting player in films of the 1910's, retiring late in the decade only to return as a bit player in the late 1940's. The only talkies she was billed in were her two stints as Mrs. Hicks and this was her final film, passing away in early 1951 at age 79.

"The modern home" segment has some good sight gags that still hold up today and it's interesting how "modern" or even space-age this home seems to 21st century audiences, including a wide-screen television decades before they were actually produced on the general market. Also a fun bit of trivia is seeing the Kettles interviewed by a fictional TV network "ABC Television" several years before there actually was such a network.

When you watch Ma and Pa Kettle, you get what you expect - lazy Pa, all-enduring Ma, raising 15 kids, who, except for oldest son and college graduate Tom (Richard Long - yes, that Richard Long from Big Valley) are mostly just there for the sake of chaos. But the gags can be a good laugh as Pa wins a new modern house in a contest and the Kettles move from the rundown farm to the high-tech home of the future. The beds in the new house that fold into the wall unexpectedly, the closet in the old house where everything falls out when you open the door, Pa's clothes all shrinking when he gets stuck in the clothes dryer, and my favorite - Pa flopping up and down in his chair to turn on the radio (which somehow is always playing "Hold That Tiger.").

A love interest for Tom (Meg Randall), a magazine writer who wants to write about the Kettles, exposes some of Tom's embarrassment about his family and their poverty as he has moved on to higher education and sophistication, but love will win out and so will the Kettles just being who they are. This is not a deep thinking movie and not even high comedy, but it's fun.

Although, I am slightly biased. I think this movie is fun to put on no matter the occasion. Growing up, my Grand(Ma) owned a collection of Ma and Pa Kettle films. When I would come over to visit she would let me select a movie to watch and she had a selection of genres, anywhere from Psycho - to Ace Ventura Pet Detective. And I would mostly select a Ma And Pa Kettle film. For me being a kid at the time and this movie being way before my time I still found it hilarious, creative and fun! And watching as an adult I still enjoy the intricacies of these movies. The humor is simple but not crude and I promise you will get a chuckle throughout! Please have a gander and share with your little ones so these classics aren't forgotten!