Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952)

Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952)

The heat is on between Ma and Birdie Hicks (Esther Dale) as both get competitive in the jam, breadmaking, and horse race events at the local fair, not that Ma wanted to participate in horse racing, she signed up for the wrong event by mistake!

The Kettle’s (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride) second oldest needs money to start college, and after a failed attempt at a monetary injury settlement scam, Pa figures that if Ma wins the contests, they’ll get enough money to make up for it.

After a complex sequence of events (including a predictable bread batter mix-up) Ma and Pa get incarcerated when suspected of sabotaging the race, but Ma had already been the bigger person and, when the truth of it comes out, it all ends well.

Lots of very welcome jokes, puns, creative insults, and other types of verbal comedy, (a lot of verbal confusion and even acknowledgment from Ma that she has made a joke) on this one.

For some reason the previous chapters had avoided this type of verbal humor and had coasted mostly on their characters' charm. The previous chapter had already reprised one of A&C’s classic fake math skits, and the Universal comedy writers not only go back to Abbot and Costello-type wordplay, but they even name-drop the duo.

In my estimation, the focus on clever language made this movie the funniest chapter of the series, (so far at least.) Too bad many of the original participants have started to be recast.

I have already mentioned some fantasy and science fictional elements in other of the chapters, and this one also includes a living scarecrow during a runaway horse sequence which I am going to simply describe as surreal and the sort of throwaway gag some Abbot and Costello movies sometimes included, (the ducking Statue of Liberty in Abbot and Costello go to Mars is the closest approximation to it.)

With Lori Nelson and James Best.