Ma & Pa Kettle: Complete Comedy Collection

The titular corny backwoods couple played by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride made their debut as supporting players in The Egg and I (1947), a comedy about city girl Claudette Colbert's adventures in rural America after her husband (Fred MacMurray) indulges in his dream: chicken farming. Directed by Chester Erskine, the film was a good-natured effort with amiable leads, but it was Ma and Pa Kettle who went on to star in a series of low-budget movies, kicking off with Ma and Pa Kettle (1949), directed by Charles Lamont and co-starring Richard Long as Tom, the unusually responsible eldest Kettle son in an otherwise out-of-control brood of 15 kids. This is basically hick humor, but Main and Kilbride know how to sell it: she's loud and loving as an unpretentious mother hen, and he's a pleasantly irresponsible loafer who devises audacious schemes to get out of working for a living. The series, which ultimately numbered 10 productions (including The Egg and I)—all compiled here—continued with Lamont helming 1950's Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (which turns out to be Manhattan); Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951), directed by Edward Sedgwick and involving, among other things, a search for uranium; Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952), directed by Charles Barton, with the Kettles trying to raise money to send a daughter to college; Lamont's Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation (1953), featuring a trip to Paris; Ma and Pa Kettle at Home (1954), another Lamont effort, concerning a college scholarship competition; and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955), the final film with Kilbride as Pa, directed by Lee Sholem. Arthur Hunnicutt stepped in as Pa for The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956), Lamont's last stint in the director's chair; and Parker Fennelly took on the role in The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957), a romp from filmmaker Virgil W. Vogel involving matchmaking efforts. But with Kilbride gone and the franchise running out of ideas, the series ended. In the larger scheme of Hollywood history, the Kettle films are a footnote at best, but they still have fans among older viewers and this set offers an excellent bargain. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)