Ma and Pa Kettle are comic characters portrayed in the film The Egg and I starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. After positive audience reaction, Ma and Pa Kettle and their fifteen children became the subject of a series of their own very popular comic films from 1949 to 1957. They were loosely based on the fictional characters of the same in the 1945 best-selling novel The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald about life on a chicken farm. McDonald based them on real-life farming neighbors in Washington state, U.S.A.The ten Kettle films are: The Egg and I - 1947Ma and Pa Kettle - 1949[6]Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town - 1950Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm - 1951Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair - 1952Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation - 1953Ma and Pa Kettle at Home - 1954Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki - 1955The Kettles in the Ozarks - 1956The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm - 1957