MA AND PA KETTLE AT HOME

Marjorie Main and Brett Halsey

MA AND PA KETTLE AT HOME (1954). Director: Charles Lamont.

Ma (Marjorie Main) and Pa (Percy Kilbride) Kettle learn that a New York magazine is offering a scholarship to college as a prize, and that their son, Elwin (Brett Halsey), entered the contest, but in his essay has made their farm sound much more ideal than it is. Complicating matters is that Elwin's girlfriend, Sally (Alice Kelley), has also entered the contest, even though her grumpy, penny-pinching father, John (Irving Bacon), could afford to send her on his own. Two judges (Alan Mowbray of Becky Sharp and Ross Elliott of Tarantula) come out to the farms to inspect each applicant and their way of life, and Ma and Pa hurry to fix up their old farm, although there's really no reason they couldn't have just used their new-fangled house. As usual Pa gets his Indian friends to do all of the work. Much of the humor in the film is centered around Alan Mowbray as a persnickety city fellow who has to use out-dated plumbing and finds a frog in his bath (courtesy of little Billy Kettle, played by Richard Eyer), among other atrocities.

Christmas with the Kettles

Ma and Pa Kettle at Home is not the best of the series but it's an improvement over Ma and Pa Kettle in Waikiki. Lori Nelson and Richard Long as the two oldest Kettle children are nowhere in evidence and are never mentioned. Although he had bit parts before this and appeared on TV, this was Brett Halsey's first credited role in a motion picture and most of the time he just seems scared. Emory Parnell returns as store owner Billy Reed, and Mary Wickes again receives short shrift as a librarian who develops an interest in Mowbray. Kilbride and Main are as wonderful as ever, and Main is given a great bit in which she recites a funny poem at a Christmas party. Pa not only treats his Indian friends like unpaid slaves, but at one point has them dress up in warpaint and go on the warpath so he can "rescue" Mowbray from them and be seen as a hero. At least the Native Americans are pretty disgruntled at doing this.

There were two more Kettle films made without Kilbride in the fifties (who did not pass away until 1964). In one film, The Kettles in the Ozarks, Pa was left out and an uncle was substituted, and in the final Kettle movie, The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm, Pa was portrayed by Parker Fennelly.

Verdict: Can't keep those Kettles from coming! **3/4. 

FRIENDLY PERSUASION

"Will Pleasure you:" Suggestive ad for the movie

FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956). Director: William Wyler.

Although the Quakers in a small town in South Indiana are warned that they may have to defend themselves and their homes against rebel soldiers, Jess Birdwell (Gary Cooper) is determined that his grown son, Josh (Anthony Perkins), will not fight in the Civil War as it's against his religion. Although the one battle scene late in the picture is well done, the war almost seems like an after-thought in this movie in which Cooper plays it too cute by far in a role that cries out for a more talented and appropriate character actor. Perkins is quite good, however, as is Phyllis Love as his sister Mattie; Mark Richman as her boyfriend Gardner; Richard Eyer [The 7th Voyage of Sinbad] as Josh's younger brother; and Robert Middleton as a friend and rival of Jess's. Dorothy McGuire is all wide-eyed and beatific as Jess' wife, Eliza. Although Marjorie Main is as good as ever, the whole business with her and her three marriage-minded daughters [see photo] seems dragged in from an Abbott and Costello movie. Wyler's direction is solid, and there is excellent photography courtesy of Ellsworth Fredericks/Fredricks -- he used both spellings -- and a nice score by Dimitri Tiomkin. Joel Fluellen [Monster from Green Hell] and Robert Fuller [Brain from Planet Arous] have smaller roles. The talented Phyllis Love appeared almost exclusively on television. A goose named Samantha has nearly as much to do as Gertrude the Duck in Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Verdict: Not bad for what it is, but not for every taste. **1/2.