User Reviews

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.

The Further Adventures of Ma and Pa Kettle almost seamlessly picks up where The Egg and I left off. For the first solo adventure of the Kettles a new writing team and director is introduced. Leonard Goldstein, associate producer of The Egg and I, was producer of The Further Adventures of Ma and Pa Kettle. With many of the characters played by the same actors and actresses the focus from the MacDonalds to the Kettles works very well. There is a reference to Ma beating Birdie Hicks for first prize at the fair for her quilt, an import scene in The Egg and I. The prize money from the quilt contest was to be used to send Tom Kettle to college. In this movie Tom is returning home as a college graduate.

There are two plots intertwined in this movie. One is the comedy of the simple mountain family moving into a state of the art modern house. The other is a light morality play on how environment affects children as they grow up.

Pa Kettle (Percy Kilbride) wanted a free tobacco pouch for entering a contest, and ended up winning a house. His disappointment at not getting the free tobacco pouch is played for laughs quite a bit. When Pa plays with dynamite he is totally oblivious to the explosion. Kilbride never flinched in the scene as the debris from the explosion fell around him. He played the part to perfection. In his autobiography, Jack Benny mentioned how impressed he was with Percy Kilbride's deadpan delivery. Kilbride took that comedic device to a high level of perfection.

Ma (Marjorie Main) and Pa move into the new house with modern conveniences that confuse Ma and Pa almost as much as they help them. Ma adapts far more quickly than Pa. Included with the modern conveniences is a television, a very new household item in 1949. Moving walls, hidden beds, and plumbing fixtures are used as comic props, but the attention is on Ma and Pa, never the props themselves.

Tom Kettle (Richard Long) meets Kim Parker (Meg Randall), a magazine writer who feels that hygiene and environment are essential for children to realize success as adults. Tom is a bright, self-made man who contradicts the theory that success can only come from a pristine environment. This subject is briefly discussed in a couple of scenes, but left to subside. It was also the only serious discussion in this otherwise whimsical movie.

Seeing the Kettles moving out of their run-down old house to move to a new house would almost be a disaster if it were not for the characters staying true to themselves. Ma was the practical one, just as she had been in the The Egg and I. Pa was the fish out of water that provided the best comedy. He never felt at home in the new house, but the actual location of a comfortable bed would never be of concern to him.

This was the very first Ma and Pa Kettle film and it is probably the second ranked film in the series in terms of laughs (just behind Ma and Pa's trip to Hawaii). This is film definitely has all the elements that made the series great, boisterous Ma, lazy Pa and their wild brood of 15 (or is it 16?). Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride were perfectly cast in this film and made for a classic pairing that and they would become two of the most enduring characters in all of filmdom. The chemistry between the two made you actually think they were married and it made for a great time and made the whole series great.

Also, I often wonder if Paul Henning actually got his ideas for the "Beverly Hillbillies" from this film and not from the hillbillies he saw on his vacations.

Ma and Pa Kettle, much like Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, pump out pretty much the same jokes in this film as all there others, and that's ok.

They are so charming.

I don't think too many of the current generation will stumble across them, which is a shame :)

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

There is a need for this kind of entertainment in our modern world. You can watch "Ma and Pa" with adults, with your family (kids any age or just by yourself like me. They are gentle, but gentle is so refreshing in a society of kids killing kids, a horrible war, inappropriate prime time television and poverty. We don't even get a hint of where all of those children came from! Give me modern plumbing and I'll gladly become a Kettle. Humor does NOT require offensive language. It is hard to follow conversations in shows where every other word is bleeped. Relax, take your shoes off, and climb in your recliner with a good old-fashioned glass of lemonade, and just breathe easy watching Ma sweeping the chickens off the table at lunch time! Pj

Having appeared as supporting characters in "The Egg and I", Ma and Pa Kettle (and their children) got to be the stars of a movie. Charles Lamont's "Ma and Pa Kettle" features the rural brood moving into a prefab home and trying to adjust to the modern lifestyle. The movie reminded me of the Daffy Duck-Elmer Fudd cartoon "Design for Leaving", wherein Daffy turns Elmer's house into a push-button home, with Elmer suffering repeated mishaps.

Admittedly, the movie isn't anything profound, but it doesn't pretend to be. Ma is her usual sharp-tongued self, Pa is his usual lazy self, the kids appear to be trained in guerrilla warfare, and Tom is the forward-thinking member of the family. As for Kim, well...what a babe!

You'll probably have fun watching the movie.

Ma and Pa Kettle live in a falling down shack with 14 of their 15 kids. Tom, the eldest, is away at college. Ma can't remember all of her kids names, and Pa is extremely lazy. Pa enters a contest to supply a slogan for a tobacco company so he can get a new tobacco pouch. They end up winning the grand prize, a new, modern house with many electronic features. My expectations of this film was that it would have more slapstick elements in it, like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, but it doesn't. It has gentle humor, most of it stemming from Pa Kettle's "fish out of water" situations, ie a poor country man living in a house with modern conveniences. This film was OK, but I really didn't laugh out loud too many times. More of a gentle type of humor, it just brought smiles to my face.

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.

As the years go by, we become used to the sort of broad humor in comedies today, especially those half-hour sitcoms on TV. Back in '49 it may have seemed riotously funny to watch a hillbilly family move from a shack to a state of the art mansion, but the humor here is all based on the assumption that you'll fall down laughing at the antics of MARJORIE MAIN and PERCY KILBRIDE as The Kettles.

Not so. It's a tepid script that barely contains any real pratfalls--just a matter of the push button technology being a bit over the heads of the Kettle clan with some amusing gaffes to spring a few chuckles.

The push-button home entertainment features look pretty modern for 1949 at a time when most B&W TV sets were considered "big" if the screen was 16". The set shown here is bigger than the 32" screens today.

RICHARD LONG is the son home from college and MEG RANDALL is the sweet love interest, but neither one is able to bring any dimension to their supporting roles.

Watchable for fans of the series, but today nothing in it seems very original.

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!

I'd somehow managed to go my entire life without seeing a Ma & Pa Kettle film (other than THE EGG AND I, which I don't think I got far enough into to meet the Kettles) - until tonight, that is, when I saw that MA & PA KETTLE was about to start on TCM. I figured it would probably be a fun way to wind down Saturday evening. Well, despite the presence of the usually delightful Marjorie Main, from the very first scene I found this film loud, irritating, and remarkably unfunny. Yes, I stuck it out to the end. Oh well. I kept feeling that what I was watching somehow should have been funny, but while the film may have convulsed audiences in 1949, by 2010 standards it was pretty tough going. Loved that flat-screen TV, though!

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.

I'm surprised that there hasn't been a remake of this series! When I was growing up I remember watching this show with my parents! They have passed away since! But I think seeing a remake of this would bring back happy memories of my Mom & Dad! It was a really good show about reality of having such a big family & struggling to tend to them! My parents grew up with a large family! So they could relate!! Now with all the passings it's not like that anymore 😢! But making the best of what you could do as a parent! Ma & Pa Kettle did exactly that!! My favorite part where 1 of the kids walks up & starts talking to Ma & she asked Who Are You? 😂 The kid saids I'm your child! Having such a big family trying to remember each child & their Names is so true of forgetting lol!! I think this is a great show for the Modern Day Family! Something to think of when a parents struggles to make ends meet!!

Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride proved so popular as characters in The Egg And I that Universal Pictures gave them their own series. This film Ma And Pa Kettle was the first of many as the Kettles become cult figures in red state America of the Truman and Eisenhower years.

Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle was the role model for Edgar Buchanan in Petticoat Junction as the laziest man alive. Of course with the 15 kids that he and Marjorie Main produced he was good for at least one activity. But we do have to consider that Marjorie gave more of a long term commitment to producing the brood.

Anyway Kilbride does enter contests and this film concerns the fact that he entered a contest slogan and won a brand new house which is all push buttons. His contest win puts their Arkansas town on the map. But it brings more trouble than its worth sometimes.

In other news the oldest Kettle played by Richard Long is back from agricultural college and he's made himself a new and improved incubator for chicken eggs. On the train home he meets Meg Randall who is a writer for a magazine who is covering the Kettles and their new home as a human interest story. It's rough courtship as Randall has to get used to the ways of the Kettles, but she's a good person and a good sport.

As I wrote on another Kettle film review, if you were a big fan of things like Petticoat Junction and Green Acres, the Kettle films were your cup of tea back in the day.

This as the first of the Ma and Pa Kettle flicks. Marjorie Main (Ma) steals the show in anything she does. Funny to see Ida Moore as Emily, the daffy old lady on the train.. god she was ALWAYS old; she was in "Desk Set" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Their new house is also a co-star here -- its the house of the future with some really cool inventions that Pa doesn't care for. LOVE the painting gag. Keep an eye out for TOM... he starred in "Nanny & the Professor". Unfortunately he died real young... oddly enough, his last role was on the series "Death Cruise". weird. Directed by Charles Lamont, who not only directed several of the Kettle films, he also did a bunch of the Abbott and Costello flicks, so he must have known a thing or two about comedy. Fun story, plain, simple humor. Even the release date was April Fool's day, 1949. The story starts out by showing us what backward and country-folk they are (the neighbors are even Native Americans), but as the story progresses, we have sympathy and respect for them.

Ma and Pa Kettle are a disgrace to the local community. Just as their property is about to be condemned, they win a tobacco slogan contest and the prize is a new modern house. The community is overjoyed.

Ma and Pa Kettle are two side characters from the book/movie "The Egg and I". Apparently, it was a bit of a surprise that these characters became the breakout stars over the lead characters in the original movie. I have to check it out and see. It's fairly simple. They are the standard lovable country bumpkins. There are many similar characters in entertainment throughout history. They would start a series of films. One can see why. They are a lovely example of this cinematic trope.