The Mating Season (1951)

Thelma Ritter was always a scene-stealer, upstaging the stars, but perhaps it is no more evident than in this comedy starring Gene Tierney, John Lund and Miriam Hopkins. She runs a hamburger stand in New Jersey, talks plain and works hard. Her son Val McNulty is a college graduate and a kind gentlemanly figure who also loves his mom for who she is.

In one of the fastest meet-cutes/courtships I have ever seen on film, Val marries the lovely socialite Maggie, a woman above him in status who falls for him because he is nothing like the stuffy upper crust she is used to dealing with. 

In a classic screwball type development of mistaken identity, Ellen McNulty arrives to live with her son after her stand was closed down. But when calling on the house she is mistaken for a cook, and she willing plays along with the mistake in order not to embarrass her son. Imagine his surprise when he sees her and yet he does not explain who she is. She tells him to play along with the little deception and Val reluctantly goes along with it.

When Maggie's own stuffy mother (Miriam Hopkins) comes into town, she disapproves of her daughter marrying below her and nothing will make her like Val. Just think what would happen if she knew who Ellen really was?

One evening the unlikely couple goes to a party held by the Kalinger Family who run Val's firm. There Maggie is insulted and runs out of the party in a huff. The lady she has a spat with is a prestigious person and Val forces her to apologize. Needless to say the marital sparks fly. However, things heat up even more when Maggie finds out by accident who Ellen really is. Now Val has a lot of explaining to do and his wife feels lied to. She is furious that he would think her too proud to welcome in his humble mother. Maggie gets ready to leave for Mexico, a destination for attaining an easier divorce.

Interestingly enough, it is an unlikely outsider in Mr. Kalinger Sr. (Larry Keating) who gets the couple back together through a shameless ploy. However, they are not the only unlikely love story, he has a budding romance of his own.

Mitchell Leisen seems to be a little known director but after seeing this film I was quite impressed. This movie works because of the conflict in class and the complications and laughs that come out of it. It is this type of conflict that hearkens back to the scatterbrained screwball comedies of the 1930s. Perhaps it is a little hard to believe that Lund was Ritter's son, but they had enough chemistry to make it seem plausible. It was also hilarious to see Gene Tierney struggling in the kitchen and Miriam Hopkins was a decent inclusion playing Maggie's opinionated and overblown mother. Call me plebeian if you want, but I know which mom I would take... 

4/5 Stars