The Mating Season

I really enjoyed the cogent observations made in the member reviews above. I'd like to add a couple additional observations.

In debt to the Jersey City bank, hard-working widow Thelma Ritter (as Ellen) gives up her hamburger stand and hitchhikes by pick-up truck and school bus to visit earnest son John Lund (as Val McNulty) in Meridian, Ohio. Meanwhile, Mr.

An absolutely charming film from 1951 that finds working class John Lund marrying well-to-do Gene Tierney and then spending the first weeks of their marriage trying to hide his blue collar past. Things get complicated when Lund's mom (played beautifully by Thelma Ritter) is hired to be their live-in cook without Tierney knowing she's her mother-in-law (long story), and even more complicated when Tierney's snobbish horror of a mother (Miriam Hopkins) stays for a long visit.

The Mating Season (1951)A madcap, bright Paramount comedy, not quite screwball in its structure but a zany situation with a mother-in-law in inadvertent disguise and wife and an ex-girlfriend still after the husband. The centerpieces of the action are two or three big parties in a suburban styled apartment, a true 1950s dream in a way.

Mitchell Leisen will never go down in my estimations as a personal favourite director of mine. He was though competent and did do a fair share of interesting and even great films, 'Midnight' is one of my favourites of his.

Though Gene Tierney and John Lund are the leads in this film, Thelma Ritter steals it completely as Lund's down to earth plebian mother from New Jersey. Thelma got one of her Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress, the second of six she was to earn in her career.

This farce may not be the best thing Mitchell Leisen ever did but it's a charmer nevertheless and it gave Thelma Ritter one of her best roles as well as having a cracker of a script from Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen.

Thelma Ritter is the whole reason for this film. She's the lynch pin, and the best part.

Although Gene Tierney is listed as the nominal star for box-office purposes, it is Thelma Ritter who is the star of this show. When Thelma sells her hamburger stand in the midwest to spend more time with her daughter, pretentious socialite Gene Tierney is horrified.