love 'em or hate 'em, Ma and Pa Kettle left their mark on Hollywood, one that began with The Egg and I (1947), a film based on Betty MacDonald's then-popular memoir of the same name, and starred Majorie Main and Percy Kilbride as the original neighbors from Hell. MacDonald's farm was (and still is, sort of) just off Route 19 on Washington's Olympic Peninsula - about 60 miles from Tacoma in a place named Chimacum (here's a map). although audiences seemed slow to tire of their cinematically inbred antics (appearing in no less than ten such films), the real-life Ma and Kettle weren't laughing, and sued MacDonald, her publisher and even The Bon Marché in a series of well-publicized lawsuits. here's a little Wikipedia read on that topic, and one more on MacDonald herself.

MA AND PA KETTLE :: A MATH LESSON