Looking for Betty MacDonald: The Egg, the Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I

by Paula Becker

  Betty was interviewed constantly, charming the press with her clever answers to their rote questions. Her lifelong penchant for reading movie magazines had inadvertently prepared her for this moment. As Betty was feted, rumors flew. Shirley Temple, then seventeen, was said to be contending for the lead. Betty’s daughter Anne—then eighteen, with no film experience—was also reportedly being considered to play the part of her own mother. Betty was said to have told a radio commentator that she, Don, and the girls planned to move permanently to Hollywood.

  In a broad nod to the book’s title, eggs were the overwhelming theme of Betty’s Hollywood tour. At parties in her honor, buffet tables groaned with egg dishes in every shape and form. Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, Joan Bennett, Mickey Rooney, Jack Benny, and other Hollywood elites grazed on the ovoid feast. Radio listeners heard that Betty never ate eggs, a half-truth that didn’t stop hosts from surrounding her with them. Reporters loved the egg-hating angle. Multiple interviews pictured a grinning Betty with a pull quote along the lines of “I hope I never see another egg as long as I live.”4

  This fawning attention did not turn Betty’s head. She was typically self-effacing on her return to Vashon when she saw photographs taken at these Hollywood events: “It was lucky that I had my strength when I got home and opened my mail and there were the pictures taken at the Press Club and that old French prostitute at the head of the table upon close observation turned out to be me.”5

  Soon after Betty’s trip, Universal-International announced that Claudette Colbert had won the leading role in the film. In modern terms, this was the casting equivalent of Reese Witherspoon taking the part of Cheryl Strayed in the film Wild, or Julia Roberts playing Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love. Glamorous, untouchable, her eyebrow arches plucked pencil thin, with skin so porcelain-perfect it appeared to have been airbrushed, Claudette Colbert was a major Hollywood star by the time she played Betty. She had been paired with Fred MacMurray, who was cast as Bob in Egg, for five previous pictures. MacMurray, too, was a star, with some fifty films already to his credit. The Egg and I would be by far the most popular of Colbert’s and MacMurray’s seven joint projects, and the only one to spawn sequels (albeit without the glamorous leading actors).

  Claudette Colbert was forty-three when she appeared in Egg, more than twice Betty’s age in the book. Colbert’s china-doll frigidity and fresh-off-the-costume-rack perfection have more in common with the smiling Betty MacDonald book cover than with the book’s contents. Colbert’s Betty was as smooth and bland as well-stirred Cream of Wheat. One Egg fan weighed in on the casting decision in a letter to Betty: “I doubt Claudette’s ability to portray your activities as you described them in the book. I doubt whether she can even make good coffee, let alone cook a geoduck!”6

  Nearly as important as the casting of Betty and Bob were the choices for the leading character roles, Ma and Pa Kettle. The film gives the Kettles a more prominent role than the book does, a decision that helped inflame resentment among the Bishops, Betty and Bob Heskett’s real-life Chimacum neighbors. The veteran character actress Marjorie Main was cast as Ma Kettle, and Percy Kilbride—then in his forty-seventh year in the theatrical profession—won the role of her shiftless but amiable spouse. Main and Kilbride brought these characters vividly to life. Ma’s heart-of-gold sloppiness and well-used aprons and Pa’s ever-present black derby hat became emblems for a pair of characters that filmgoers immediately understood. These parts would prove to be the defining roles of both these venerable actors’ careers.

  Before filming could start, the studio had regulatory matters to attend to. The screenplay, in draft form, was vetted by Universal-International’s attorneys and by staffers in the office of the film-industry moral watchdog Joseph Breen at the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The Breen office read screenplays and then issued changes—some suggested, others demanded—that would help films conform to the restrictions of the Hays Code. Named for the MPPDA director Will Hays, the code was a set of moral guidelines for films. Films whose content violated the Hays Code were denied the Hays Office Purity Seal of Approval and could generally not be distributed or exhibited.

  Universal-International paid lip service to the notes the Breen office sent after reading the final shooting script, omitting a few toilet gags and making sure Colbert wore a slip under her dress. The film’s final cut still included a suggestively purred line delivered by Betty’s romantic rival (invented for the film), the wealthy hobby farmer Harriet Putnam, about taking Bob into her barn to show him her Speckled Sussex.7 The Hays Code enforcers had little to object to from Colbert and MacMurray, whose chaste portrayals of Betty and Bob were devoid of any suggestion of sensuality.

  The Kettles were tidied up slightly to conform to the Hays Code. Pa’s almost sinister shiftlessness in the book became lazy bemusement in the film, and his thick lisp was softened almost out of existence. Ma still scratched her itches, shifted her enormous bosom, and spoke with an earthiness born of raising fifteen children. She had a heart of gold, however, and was gratefully embraced by Betty (more so than in the book). And Tits Kettle, Ma and Pa’s married daughter, whose baby in the book has “fits,” fades into the sibling crowd in the film and is mercifully nameless.

  The Humane Society weighed in too, demanding that the pig, Cleopatra (with whom Claudette Colbert would bravely tussle), be pushed or shoved rather than pulled; that the dead cougar called for in the film script be not a dead cougar but an anesthetized one, or better still a dummy; and that the tree scheduled to fall on and crush the chicken house not harm any chickens. So concerned was the Humane Society about this scene that they planned to have a representative present on the day it was scheduled to be shot.8

  Studio lawyers were concerned that because The Egg and I was a work of nonfiction and the screenplay hewed closely to the book’s depictions, making the picture could expose Universal-International to libel claims. Studio attorneys suggested obtaining releases from any living persons who could be identified as characters in the script, but only one person was apparently approached: Universal-International tracked down Robert Heskett and offered him a deal.

  Betty’s prolonged legal wrangling to try to force Bob to provide child support had petered out a year before Egg’s publication, and she had no idea of his whereabouts. Studio personnel found him living in Oakland, California, aware of Betty’s jollied-up literary version of their marriage and willing to sign over rights to the use of his name and story in the upcoming film. The document presented to Heskett stipulated that by signing, he would be released from the $5,500 judgment against him that King County Superior Court had awarded Betty in 1944.9 Universal-International also paid him $1,000.

  The cameras rolled. Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray’s house was large enough to fit Betty and Bob Heskett’s actual abode several times over.10 The time period was changed to the present day, and Bob was portrayed as a freshly returned GI, a veteran of the Battle of Okinawa.11 Colbert’s wardrobe was glamorous—bridal outfit, satin negligee, gray wool traveling suits, checkered farm dresses in fresh green, blue, and white, and even a turquoise flannel robe, all created by the famous fashion designer Adrian.12 How far from Chimacum the Betty character had journeyed!13 Marjorie Main’s wardrobe was listed in the production budget as “Dirty House Dress.” She had three of them, plus the new dress Betty sews for her.

  Studio publicity and, later, reviewers made much of the fact that the perpetually pristine Colbert actually got dirty in the film, though the scene of her coaxing Cleopatra the pig and slipping in the mud was shot all in one day. “No one could have enacted Betty with more charm than Miss Colbert. She has to take quite a physical beating to project her role, but she faces everything with the superb sportsmanship of a true trooper,” the Hollywood Reporter enthused.14

  The movie’s opening scene finds Colbert’s neatly suited Betty in a dining car on a train, being served a breakfast egg by a smiling black waiter. The train sways,
and the waiter drops the egg, then says soothingly to Betty, “It’s only an egg.” Betty’s indignant response, “Only an egg! I suppose it never occurred to you that this egg was someone’s child?” gives her an opening to shoehorn the book’s title into her retort, “Well, so did I once. But that was before the egg and I!”

  In early January 1947, Betty and Don departed Seattle’s Boeing Field, bound once again for Hollywood. Betty was needed to shoot publicity photos with the cast and help gin up prerelease excitement.15 Reporters noted that Betty was more polished, even sophisticated, on this visit—eager to sample fine cuisine and ready to dicker with antique dealers over their wares. Although Betty was not a movie star, her face had become instantly recognizable, and over the preceding six months she had grown secure in her celebrity. Making herself accessible to reporters, verbally deft, and easy to write about, she made good copy. Newspapers announcing Betty’s Hollywood journey noted that Associated Press editors had just named her among the Women of the Year for 1946, an honor she shared with the actresses Helen Hayes and Ingrid Bergman, the singer Kate Smith, and the athlete Mildred “Babe” Didrikson.16

  Being famous brought Betty offers for product endorsements, usually with a book plug thrown in. Betty’s smiling portrait was used to advertise Loft Candy’s chocolate eggs. “I thought I knew all about eggs,” ran the ad copy, “but then our chickens never gave us eggs like Loft’s.”17 Authors signing their books in Betty’s day used fountain pens. Betty liked a broad, soft nib, and she signed so many books that keeping her pen in working order was a constant challenge. After much back-and-forth with first the Schaefer and then the Parker pen company, Betty endorsed the Parker, appearing in an advertisement. The Crosley appliance company ran Betty’s picture under the headline “The Egg and I Are Ten Times Happier!” The ad copy, written in the first person, went on, “If you’ve read The Egg and I, you’ll remember some of the troubles I had in the kitchen. But now things are different—because Egg and I have just treated ourselves to a wonderful new Crosley Shelvador Refrigerator! According to Egg, Crosley’s new ‘Care Free’ Automatic Defrosting is the cleverest work-saver since women were invented!”18 And in a tie-in that must have been too perfect to resist, Betty promoted Helene Curtis Shampoo plus Egg.

  In Hollywood, everything Betty did was a potential photo op. Betty and Don visited the Egg set, accompanied by a studio photographer. Betty posed for photographs bending over Stove alongside Claudette Colbert. Betty’s stylish hat (crowned with a plume of chicken feathers) and her smart suit both complemented and contrasted with Colbert’s crisp, cheerful puff-sleeved gingham dress and spotless ruffled apron. The house set—so clean it sparkled—and Miss Colbert, that most glamorous doppelgänger—slopped yet another coat of whitewash onto the real Betty’s history with Robert Heskett in the tiny cabin in the rain in Chimacum.

  This photo op must have been mind-boggling for Betty. She had no doubt watched Colbert on Seattle movie screens, and to be played by her—controlled perfection in this flattened version of the expurgated recasting of her own story—must have been eerie. Whatever dresses the young Betty Heskett wore in Chimacum during her years raising chickens and fending off her husband’s temper, it seems doubtful that they were perky or perfectly starched.

  She had reclaimed those years and shaped what she’d experienced with Bob into a version she wanted to reveal, first to her family and friends, and then in print. Bob Heskett had known all about the book, acknowledged to his friends that he was that Bob, and never elaborated on the tale or contradicted his former wife. Then, for the film, Bob had released Betty, given (or sold) his name to her.19 Now the Hesketts were represented by movie stars: MacMurray in his chipper plaid shirts, Colbert as sweet and crisp as the sugar crust on crème brûlée. With her messy actual history encased in Claudette Colbert’s impervious interpretation, were Betty Heskett’s demons finally exorcised? The film ensured once and for all that Betty’s crafted version of her marriage to Bob became the truth of record.

  Betty agreed to shoot an on-set promotional trailer for the film.20 The trailer begins with a still photo of Betty’s smiling portrait on the cover of Egg. Copies of the book multiply. The narrator announces: “Here is . . . the book that shook the world . . . with laughter. For two years . . . and still . . . a top best-seller (1,300,000 copies). [Stacks of the book continue heaping up.] A Book-of-the-Month smash (506,208 copies). A sensation to the twenty million readers of Atlantic Monthly, Liberty, Reader’s Digest.”21 The book-cover photo then comes alive, and Betty introduces herself, endorses the film, and lists the characters.

  Betty’s great strength in interviews was her spontaneity, her candid answers to even repetitive questions. Egg’s trailer gave her the chance for none of this. Her face is stiff with pancake makeup, her skin more matte than even Claudette Colbert’s, and she looks ill at ease. The Rotogravure section of the Seattle Times accompanied a photo spread of Betty filming the trailer with the summation, “Betty was taut and nervous while a technician checked the light meter.”22

  As with movie stars of the era, Betty MacDonald’s image was both magnified and flattened when she was scripted by Hollywood. Standing next to Colbert, she was projected, literally, into a higher stratosphere of public attention. Unlike her book, and unlike her candid sessions with reporters, Hollywood’s version of Betty offered no surprises. Nevertheless, across the country, the trailer whipped up interest in the film and furthered Betty’s fame.

  Betty’s several weeks interacting with studio bigwigs were draining, and she was relieved to return to Seattle. “We had a very good time in Hollywood,” Betty wrote Bernice Baumgarten. “They are so tricky that Don and I got so we looked at both sides of our napkins before wiping our mouths for fear the napkin would really be a contract to write for Photoplay magazine and the gravy from my mouth would constitute a signature.”23

  After the film wrapped, the ballyhoo began. Universal-International press agent Ralph Ober took to the rails, roads, and sky with a Rhode Island Red hen he named Betty MacDonald, promoting the film. The fifteen-month-old hen’s claws were varnished crimson, and lipstick was routinely applied to her beak. Ober and his feathered Betty logged over twenty-five thousand miles publicizing the film.

  Publicity for the film, perhaps inevitably, featured quirky uses of eggs. Betty had long since become adept at autographing them. Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert quickly acquired the skill, which made for striking photo ops. Just signing eggs was not enough, however. The strangest publicity idea of all must be the one suggested by the studio’s Boston flack, Bill Schulman. Messages could be inserted into real eggs, Schulman explained, by typing them onto thin strips of onionskin paper. The message could be tightly rolled and sealed into a small capsule, which could be placed in a hen’s oviduct. Two days later, the hen would lay an egg with the message capsule contained in the yolk. Schulman proposed to serve such a message—signed by Claudette Colbert—to Massachusetts governor Robert Bradford in his breakfast egg. Bradford would see the film and—on his own onionskin strip inserted into some other unlucky fowl’s oviduct—send return greetings to Colbert.

  Another bizarre gimmick called for a four-foot papier-mâché egg to be placed atop a movie theater with a publicist inside, legs dangling and swinging while he or she called out to attract attention. Another, the lucky-number egg-hatching stunt, instructed theater owners to turn their lobbies into hen houses, complete with straw, live hens, and eggs. As the hens laid eggs, theater owners were to number them. Moviegoers could pick one of these numbers, and the number of the first egg to hatch won a prize.

  Universal-International offered theater owners a three-minute cartoon by Walter Lantz that the studio’s press kit claimed was the first animated cartoon trailer ever produced for a live-action film. The cartoon featured Romeo Rooster and Henrietta Hen, a fowl pair who visit Universal-International Studios together. During their visit, Henrietta—drawn sitting, knitting, in a hospital bed—lays an egg that, when it hatches,
contains the ever-popular, green-dust-jacketed book.24

  The studio even embedded a teaser for The Egg and I in another of their 1947 releases, Brute Force, a prison drama starring Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn. The film featured a brief scene in which male prisoners are treated to a viewing of Egg, with Colbert and MacMurray looming before them on a modest screen. Nestled in the rough drama, it was a Trojan egg, beckoning the book’s many male fans.

  Lippincott produced a special dust jacket featuring MacMurray and Colbert (and Stove) on the back cover. Rubber stamps of the stars’ signatures were distributed to egg retailers around the country for stamping onto egg cartons. Families could enjoy a board game in a green box resembling the book cover and emblazoned with Fred’s and Claudette’s smiling faces. “The game is as egg-citing as the book and the movie!” promised the box copy. “Just like the story . . . with all the thrills of owning a chicken ranch!” All the publicity was—of course—billed as eggsploitation.

  Despite the prerelease hoopla, critics saw Egg for what it was: a star-studded vehicle for a star literary property. “Material employed in the bid for laughs is good, standard prat-fall comedy, basically on the corny side, but streamlined and polished to a glitter. . . . Top laugh-getters of the piece are undisputedly Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride in the main character roles of Ma and Pa Kettle. Both parts present constant temptation to burlesque and hamming. Miss Main and Kilbride resist the temptation and give an honest interpretation that simultaneously rouses the merriment and tugs at the heartstrings of the audience,” Daily Variety opined.25