The Mating Season
Directed by Mitchell Leisen
Written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard L. Breen from the play Maggie by Caesar Dunn
1951/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] Maggie Carleton: I married a stranger!
Val McNulty: Everybody marries a stranger.[/box]
This pleasant, if predictable, comedy features an Oscar-nominated performance by the great Thelma Ritter.
This is one of those 50’s films beginning with a peppy theme song sung by a chorus over the credits. Ellen McNulty (Ritter) runs a hamburger stand in New Jersey. As the movie opens, she lets the bank repossess it as she has no chance of making any part of the back payments. She’s not worried. She will go to California to live with her successful son.
In the meantime, son Val (John Lund) is working his way up the corporate ladder. Currently, he has a proposal in the works that he hope will make his future. He seems oblivious to the adoring glances from his secretary, Betsy (Jan Sterling). Unfortunately, he works for stinker/drunkard George Kalinger, Jr., son of the owner of the company.
Val goes to retrieve a car abandoned by George in a drunken stupor. It turns out his girlfriend Maggie Carleton (Gene Tierney) is still in the car which is perched precariously on top of a cliff. The two meet cute while Val rescues her and before we know it wedding bells are ringing. Maggie was brought up as an ambassador’s daughter and her snobbish mother (Miriam Hopkins) wastes no words in telling her she is marrying beneath her.
Ellen turns up on the day of the wedding. When she sees the style and class of the people involved she hightails it out of there without meeting Maggie. After Ellen saves up enough money from odd jobs to buy herself an expensive dress and hat, she again presents herself at her son’s doorstep. But Maggie mistakes her for hired help and Ellen starts pitching in in the kitchen. She refuses to let Val reveal her real identity. Shortly thereafter, Maggie’s mother moves in and makes everybody’s life miserable.
I won’t reveal anymore of the plot. It is safe to say that if you have watched enough of these things every last detail of the plot’s resolution will have been telegraphed to you well before the end.
Ritter is just as good as usual in this movie and I can’t see how anyone would have thought she was supporting here. She is definitely in more scenes than Tierney. I appreciate Jan Sterling more every time I see her on the screen. Here she has a tiny part but is very natural in it. Otherwise I didn’t laugh out loud once and the lack of surprises kind of got to me. My husband liked this more than I did.
Thelma Ritter was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
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