Actors - Marjorie Main

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	Actors - Marjorie Main

Marjorie Main (24 February 1890 - 10 April 1975) was an Oscar-nominated American character actress, perhaps best known for her role as Ma Kettle in a series of ten Ma and Pa Kettle
movies.

Early life

Main was born in Acton, Indiana as Mary Tomlinson. She attended Franklin College, in Franklin, Indiana and adopted a stage name to avoid embarrassing her father, who was a minister. She worked in vaudeville on the Chautauqua and Orpheum circuits, and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her first film was A House Divided in 1931.

Career

Main began playing upper class dowagers, but was ultimately typecast in abrasive, domineering, salty roles: her distinct voice was like chalk upon a blackboard. She repeated her stage role in Dead End
in the movie version of 1937, and was subsequently cast repeatedly as the mother of gangsters. She again transferred a strong stage performance, as a dude ranch operator in The Women, to film in 1939. She made six comedies with Wallace Beery in the 1940s.

She played Ma Kettle in The Egg and I in 1947 opposite Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and repeated it in nine more films.

Private life

Main married Stanley LeFevre Krebs, who died in 1935. Her near-pathological fear of germs did not interfere with her career.

She was later a open lesbian, and was one of Boze Hadleigh's most open interviewees in his book Hollywood Lesbians (1996). Her own lover was Spring Byington with whom she lived openly in Beverly Hills, and which might have surprised many people given Byington's near constant casting in sweetly maternal roles. Main was quoted by Hadleigh as saying: "...it's true that Spring never had any use for men."

Main died in Los Angeles, California, of lung cancer at the age of 85.

Theatre

Salvation - 1928
Scarlet Sister Mary - 1930
Ebb Tide - 1931
Music in the Air - 1932
Jackson White - 1935
Dead End
- 1935
The Women
- 1936

Films

A House Divided - 1931
Hot Saturday - 1932
Take a Chance - 1933
Art Trouble - 1934
Crime Without Passion - 1934
Music in the Air - 1934
Naughty Marietta
- 1935
Love in a Bungalow - 1937
Stella Dallas
- 1937
Dead End
- 1937
The Man Who Cried Wolf - 1937
The Wrong Road - 1937
The Shadow
- 1937
City Girl - 1938
Boy of the Streets - 1938
Penitentiary - 1938
King of the Newsboys - 1938
Test Pilot
- 1938
Three Comrades - 1938
Romance of the Limberlost - 1938
Prison Farm - 1938
Little Tough Guy - 1938
Under the Big Top - 1938
Too Hot to Handle - 1938
There Goes My Heart - 1938
Girls' School - 1938
Lucky Night - 1939
They Shall Have Music - 1939
The Angels Wash Their Faces - 1939
The Women
- 1939
Another Thin Man
- 1939
Two Thoroughbreds - 1939
I Take This Woman - 1940
Women Without Names - 1940
Dark Command - 1940
Turnabout - 1940
Susan and God - 1940
The Captain Is a Lady - 1940
Wyoming - 1940
The Wild Man of Borneo - 1941
The Trial of Mary Dugan - 1941
Barnacle Bill - 1941
A Woman's Face - 1941
The Shepherd of the Hills - 1941
Honky Tonk - 1941
The Bugle Sounds - 1941
We Were Dancing - 1942
The Affairs of Martha - 1942
Jackass Mail - 1942
Tish - 1942
Tennessee Johnson - 1943
Heaven Can Wait
- 1943
Johnny Come Lately - 1943
Rationing - 1944
Meet Me in St. Louis
- 1944
Gentle Annie - 1944
Murder, He Says - 1945
The Harvey Girls
- 1946
Undercurrent
- 1946
Bad Bascomb - 1946
The Show-Off - 1946
The Egg and I
- 1947 - Ma Kettle
The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap - 1947
Feudin', Fussin' and A-Fightin' - 1948
Ma and Pa Kettle
- 1949 - Ma Kettle
Big Jack - 1949
Ma and Pa Kettle
Go to Town - 1950 - Ma Kettle
Summer Stock
- 1950
Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone - 1951
Mr. Imperium - 1951
Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm - 1951 - Ma Kettle
The Law and the Lady - 1951
It's a Big Country - 1951
A Letter from a Soldier - 1951
The Belle of New York
- 1952
Ma and Pa Kettle
at the Fair - 1952 - Ma Kettle
Ma and Pa Kettle
on Vacation - 1953 - Ma Kettle
Fast Company - 1953
The Long, Long Trailer
- 1954
Ma and Pa Kettle
at Home - 1954 - Ma Kettle
Rose Marie
- 1954
Ricochet Romance - 1954
Ma and Pa Kettle
at Waikiki - 1955 - Ma Kettle
The Kettles in the Ozarks - 1956 - Ma Kettle
Friendly Persuasion - 1956
The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm - 1957- Ma Kettle

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