I have started to read the novel again. The first two chapters deal with Betty's growing up. The movie should have included some scenes featuring her grandmother, Gammy. This person was really fascinating and funny.
shareThe book by Betty MacDonald is NOT a novel. Novels are fictional. MacDonald's book (the first of several humorous works) was her memoirs documenting her teenage marriage in the late 1920s to a man she abruptly divorced. It does not match the "happy ending" Universal Studios tacked on. Much of the book's appeal, late in WWII, was purely the comic relief it provided. Of course, the earthy humor of Ma Kettle and the others could not exactly be replicated in a 1940s Hollywood movie. Today we would probably say the film "was inspired by actual incidents." It does not really follow the book much at all, although many characters are borrowed and developed. The hot-to-trot lady farmer, Harriet Putnam, who is always after Bob is definitely a Hollywood fabrication. It's a shame the book is so long out of print. I think it's a hilarious and well-written jewel. But there's little in common, other than the title and a few of the characters. It's not surprising Claudette Colbert didn't like the film, even though she's awfully good in it. She comes off as the typical spoiled, clueless rich "girl" (44 years old) who learns about life in the wild from the colorful, rustic folks who are her neighbors.
Mea culpa! My error. It is not a novel. Thanks for reminding me of this not so uncommon error. However, knowing that she was divorced, which husband is Bob, the first or the second?
shareIt's been years since reading the MacDonald books. I know she had teen daughters by first husband Bob who were mentioned in one of her later '40s humorous accounts of living (if memory serves) on Puget Sound. Her second husband was Don, I believe. MacDonald had a wry sense of self-deprecating humor that was perfect for the laugh-parched postwar years of the later '40s. She, alas, died of cancer in her late forties about a decade later. Besides serveral other autobiographical humororous books (one about her bout with T.B. called "The Plague and I") she did a series of kids' books ("Mrs. Piggle Wiggle"?) but I can't recall much else.
Thanks. I read the book for the first time last summer, though I had seen the movie a half dozen times, roughly. I did look a biogrphy on her and it did mention the divorce, but nothing else. R.
shareThe movie was a pale imitation of the book. If you read the book, you'll find that Betty had her own eccentric family in Seattle and was not exactly the spoiled rich girl in the movie. She married Bob in 1926 and divorced him in 1930. The story takes up in her next (chronologically speaking) book, "Anybody Can Do Anything" (which I believe is only in print in England). She details how she left Bob Heskett and went back to Seattle, living with her family during the Depression. She had some very pithy comments on the local Indian population in "The Egg and I", which probably would not be PC today
She married Don McDonald about 1942 and they lived on Vashon Island until they moved to California in the mid-1950s. Obviously, the Fred McMurray character was named "MacDonald" because they didn't want to deal with Betty's divorce in the movie.
The book is a lot more earthy than the movie - but, as another person said, not surprising, given the 1940s. It is also still in print and DEFINITELY worth reading!!
Why I called it a novel lies beyond me. I knew it was autobiograhical.
Anyway, thanks for the additonal information about Betty. That clears up a few lingering questions. I knew she was living on V. Island, since it is the location of her book "Onions in the Stew", the only other book of hers that I have read. I didn't know that they had moved to CA, leaving the beloved PNW. Nowadays, I think that more people are moving from CA to the PNW than in the reverse direction.
Her comments on the aboriginal population were typical of the day, but definitely not PC today.
Thanks, again.
Actually, when Betty was taken to court, the book was described as a novel:
http://columbia.washingtonhistory.org/anthology/washingtonians/eggAndI .aspx