This film was quite popular as a sly look at a period a mere 15 years earlier and is one of the few great American comedy of manners. The lower middle class Adams Family is deliciously skewed but the great Fred Stone is its stolid anchor in reality. Katherine's Alice is so full of naive longing that we care deeply about her even as we wince at her faux pas.
Hattie McDaniel plays an unforgettable comic role that almost steals the film. She is a low class black cook who is hired to play the role of 'family servant' in a uniform to impress the society beau of Hepburn. Her comic timing is exquisite, especially corralling a stray Brussels sprout.
I would give this an extra star if Fred McMurray dumped her in the end as he should have (this is the first of his 'soft at the center' bad boy roles such as Caine Mutiny, The Apartment etc. But they don't let him be 'bad' and he's best when he's bad.
This oddly reminds me of another film Roxy Hart (later made into the musical Chicago) which looked fondly back on 1920's from not much later (1942). Both films are in a class of nostalgia for a recent past. The depression itself made those years seem so long ago.
Hattie McDaniel plays an unforgettable comic role that almost steals the film. She is a low class black cook who is hired to play the role of 'family servant' in a uniform to impress the society beau of Hepburn. Her comic timing is exquisite, especially corralling a stray Brussels sprout.
I would give this an extra star if Fred McMurray dumped her in the end as he should have (this is the first of his 'soft at the center' bad boy roles such as Caine Mutiny, The Apartment etc. But they don't let him be 'bad' and he's best when he's bad.
This oddly reminds me of another film Roxy Hart (later made into the musical Chicago) which looked fondly back on 1920's from not much later (1942). Both films are in a class of nostalgia for a recent past. The depression itself made those years seem so long ago.