Ma & Pa Kettle - Pa Almost Piped

I just recorded four or five of them the other night, I'll have to sit down and watch them , been about forty years or more since I watched one.

Favorite shows of mine when I was a kid. They are currently playing and I'll probably record them.

In several Bing Crosby movies, I would notice that he would pack his pipe and then the pipe would just disappear. In the movie, High Society, when any actor walked into the scene, they would take out a pipe, pack it, cut a cigar, or roll a cigarette, or take one out of the case, and then after putting it in their lips, the smoking implement would disappear. There was also a Bing Christmas movie where I noticed the same thing. Everyone would prepare their smoke, and the smoking device would just vanish. At least in movies today, if a character is smoking, they let them smoke in a way that doesn't make the scene look like it has lost continuity.
Someone had told me that in some old movies, cigarette companies would require that movies have cigarettes in every scene, so the movie industry would just meet minimum requirements. Bing also had a contract that he had to be shown a certain number of times with a pipe in each movie.

The movies were loosely based on Betty MacDonald's book about the challenges of farm life on the Olympic Peninsula in the late twenties and early thirties. I think she wrote it while living on Vashon. I grew up more or less in that area, and still visit several times each year.

I remember watching them when I was a kid, and laughing my ass off.
Sorry to hear about your ass, Frank :D
Pa takes from his pocket a corncob pipe, loads the pipe the codger way, but never smokes it. He did this 3-4 times.
Yeah, sorta sets up a tension in you doesn't it? Like, light the darn thing will ya.
Michael's point is well made. Continuity can ad or detract from a scene. Little things can bug you. They do not keep you from loving the film but they can create an itch you cannot scratch.

The power of suggestion in movies is fascinating. I can't tell you how mind-blown I was to find that The Dude never actually bowls in The Big Lebowski!

To follow up on jguss' post I heartily recommend the original The Egg and I novel, published in 1945 and a million seller. It is screamingly funny, literal fall on the floor funny. The movie, from which the Ma & Pa Kettle flicks were spun off, was pretty good but, as usual, the book is wildly better, a true comic masterpiece. Don't know how available it is.

Thanks Darwin, I didn't know about the book. :D
My Mom turned me on to the movies around '63 or so. Good stuff, good times.

I just went to Amazon and got the hardback for under $5. Then also a CD set of all TEN movies, for under $10.

Talk about a good deal!

Then also a CD set of all TEN movies, for under $10.
Thanks for sharing that info, mcitinner1.
Glad you got it reattached, Frank. :D