Marjorie Main (1890 - 1975)

Best known for her portrayal of Ma Kettle in the Ma & Pa Kettle series of movies, Marjorie Main was born in Acton, Indiana, on February 24, 1890. Her father was a minister who did not approve of dramatics as a form of entertainment. She briefly attended college in Indiana but left to attend drama school. Upon graduation, she taught dramatics for a year but eventually went into vaudeville in the 1910s. She married Dr. Stanley Krebs in 1921 and more or less gave up performing for several years. When Krebs, who was about 25 years older than Main, retired to New York later in the 1920s, she then resumed acting, this time on Broadway. Her film career began with small roles in the early 1930s. But with the death of her husband in 1935, Main threw herself into her work. She never remarried and had no children.

From 1936 through 1957, Main acted in more than 100 pictures, tackling comedy and drama with ease. She took on a variety of supporting roles in big-budget films, and she was often a star attraction in many of the B movies she made, such as the Ma and Pa Kettle series produced by Universal. She appeared in Dead End in 1937 with Humphrey Bogart, The Women in 1939 with Joan Crawford, and The Harvey Girls in 1945 with Judy Garland. Her most famous role is that of Ma Kettle, which she first played in 1947’s The Egg and I starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the part and went on to play the character in 9 more Ma and Pa Kettle films for Universal.

By the early 1950s she had appeared in a majority of the MGM musicals including Meet Me in St. Louis, The Belle of New York, and It’s a Big Country. With the release of The Kettles on Old MacDonald’s Farm in 1957, Marjorie Main retired from films but continued to make a few television appearances in the late 1950s. In 1958 she made two appearances on Wagon Train and in 1964 she appeared on an episode of Perry Mason.

In 1974, a year before her death, Marjorie Main attended the Los Angeles premiere of the MGM compilation film That’s Entertainment. It was her first public appearance since she retired from films in 1958. At the post-premiere party, she was greeted with cheers of enthusiasm from the crowd of spectators. Marjorie Main passed away from lung cancer on April 10, 1975, in Los Angeles, California at the age of 85. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.