MA AND PA KETTLE

US, 1949, 76 minutes, Black and white.
Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, Richard Long, Meg Randall, Esther Dale, Emory Parnell, Ida Moore, Oliver Brady.
Directed by Charles Lamont.

Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride first appeared in the film version of Bette MacDonald’s? The Egg and I – as Ma and Pa Kettle. They were supporting characters but made a great hit, Marjorie Main being nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress. Universal Studios decided that they should appear in a sequel, Ma and Pa Kettle, 1949. It was a great success and there were eight further films in the franchise until the end of the 1950s. This film, and four others, were directed by Charles Lamont, a director at Universal Studios who made quite a number of Abbott and Costello comedies at this time.
The setting is not the mid-west, rather it is Washington state, outside Seattle.
The film opens with the dirt and disorder in the Kettle farm, the focus on the raucous children. While Ma yells ‘come and get it’, she is the heart and soul of the family, always hard-working, and generous-except to Birdie Hicks, Esther Dale, with whom she clashed in The Egg and I. Pa, played in an expert deadpanned manner by Percy Kilbride, capitalises on his lazy character. This provides a great deal of slapstick comedy.
Also around the house are two Indians, Geoduck and Crowbar, the former being played in many of the films by Oliver Grady. In retrospect, eyebrows could be raised at these caricatures of contemporary native Americans. However, it was done with good humour, and gave the opportunity for a great deal of comment about the treatment of native Americans in several of the films and some inherent racism at the time.
The criticism could be made of the caricature the of the hillbilly types and. However, this is also done in good fun and, in many of the subsequent films, there was even more satire at the expense of city slickers and their fear of the country. In some ways, the series holds up a critical mirror to aspects of American society at the time.
The key episode of the film ha Pa his winning a contemporary dream house in a competition about advertising tobacco. He himself only wanted a new pouch. There is a great deal of comedy in the family moving into the new house and discovering what all the switches could do. It is very interesting to look back to the late forties and see so many of the gadgets which many later audiences might not have thought existed in those days. There is also some satire on the media coverage and television reporting.
However, Birdie Hicks accuses Pa of cheating but the family decide to defend the house. It emerges that Billy Reed (Emory Parnell), the genial owner of the local store, who also appears in many of the films, had borrowed the winning slogan from Pa.
There is also a subplot with the oldest of the Kettle children, Tom (Richard Long) who has graduated from college and encounters a young writer on the train home, lies to her about his family and his own upbringing but is unmasked. Needless to say, there is a romance, the young woman investigating the cheating situation for Pa, vindicating him, and it all leads to a happy wedding.
The film is quite funny, sometimes laugh out loud, most often with a smile on the face. Many of the lines are deadpan, leading to double takes, and quite funny. There is an energy in Marjorie Main’s performance. There is a consistency in Percy Kilbride performance, always taking the line of least resistance.
No wonder, there was another sequel.