Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Forgotten Movies: THE EGG AND I (1947)

Perhaps because I have an inordinate fondness for MRS. PIGGLE WIGGLE books by Betty MacDonald and perhaps because she wrote the book THE EGG AND I too, I was primed to love this movie as a kid and I did. I also had a fondness for Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, which didn't hurt my chances of loving it.

Bob and Betty are two city slickers. After the war, Bob decides to make his living raising chickens. Farm life has its challenges, especially for Betty who is used to silk stockings and taxi cabs. This has all the sort of scenes you might expected. It is aided by the great Marjorie Mann (Ma Kettle).

MacDonald wrote the screenplay and Chester Erskine directed. And while looking at it on IMDB I discovered there was a brief MRS. PIGGLE WIGGLE series in the nineties starring Jean Stapleton. Sorry I missed it.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

This one introduced Ma and Pa, and I saw most of that series, or at least the ones with Percy Kilbride. Judy loved the Miss Piggle Wiggles books, and I'm sorry we didn't see that series.

George said...

I'm a big fan of Claudette Colbert. She's wonderful in THE EGG AND I. It's been years since I last saw it, but now I have an overwhelming compulsion to find a copy and to watch it!

Jeff Meyerson said...

I haven't seen it in years either. I only saw a couple of the Kettle series.

Jeff M.

Rick Robinson said...

George often gives in to those "overwhelming compulsions" so I bet he watches this soon. I remember seeing this in a theater in L.A. As part of a movie festival and it was a lot of fun, though quite predictable, as you suggest.

Cap'n Bob said...

I liked it, too, especially the part of Billy Reed played by Billy House.

Jeff Meyerson said...

I'm getting tired of commenting day after day and seeing my posts disappear.

Jeff M.

Cap'n Bob said...

I see a post by you, Jeff. It says, "I haven't seen it in years. I only saw a couple of the Kettle series."

Jerry House said...

Patti, you published this post two days before Betty MacDonald's 100th birthday.

Rick said...

A fine film. The casual racism toward the AmerIndians in the book is considerably softened in the film. And no-one would call me terribly politically correct at all...but the book's treatment of its AmerIndians frankly shocked me.

Two of Betty Macdonald's other charming memoirs, "Onions In The Stew (about living on Vashon Island in Puget Sound off Seattle) and especially "The Plague And I" (about being locked away from her family in a TB sanatarium when active TB was practically a death sentence--before penicillin) are minor masterpieces, In the case of "Plague, not really just minor.