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Marjorie Main (born Mary Tomlinson, February 24, 1890 – April 10, 1975) was an American actress, best known as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player and for her role as Ma Kettle in a series of ten Ma and Pa Kettle movies.
Main worked in vaudeville on the Orpheum circuit and in Chautauqua presentations, and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her first film was A House Divided in 1931.
Main began playing upper class dowagers, but ultimately was typecast in abrasive, domineering, salty roles, for which her distinctive voice was well suited. She repeated her stage role in Dead End in the 1937 film version, 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. At this time, she guest-starred on radio programs such as Columbia Presents Corwin and The Goldbergs.
Main was signed to a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract in 1940 and stayed with the studio until the mid-1950s. She made six films with Wallace Beery in the 1940s, including Barnacle Bill (1941), Jackass Mail (1942), and Bad Bascomb (1946). She played Sonora Cassidy, the chief cook, in The Harvey Girls (1946). The director George Sidney remarked in the commentary for the film that Miss Main was a “great lady” as well as a great actress who donated most of her paychecks over the years to the support of a school.
Perhaps her most famous role is that of Ma Kettle, which she first played in The Egg and I in 1947 opposite Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the part and portrayed the character in nine more Ma and Pa Kettle films.
By the early 1950s, she had appeared in several MGM musicals, including, Meet Me in St. Louis and The Belle of New York. She played Mrs. Wrenley in the studio’s all-star film It’s a Big Country (1951). In 1954, Marjorie Main played her last roles for the studio: Mrs. Hittaway in The Long, Long Trailer and Jane Dunstock in Rose Marie. In 1956, Main’s performance as the widow Hudspeth in the hit film Friendly Persuasion was well-received, earning her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1958, Main appeared twice as rugged frontierswoman Cassie Tanner in the episodes “The Cassie Tanner Story” and “The Sacramento Story” on NBC’s television series Wagon Train. In the first segment, she joins the wagon train, casts her romantic interest on Ward Bond as Major Adams, and helps the train locate needed horses despite a Paiute threat.
Marjorie Main Biography / Wiki
| Name | Marjorie Main |
| Also Know | Mary Tomlinson |
| Gender | Female |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Acton, Indiana, USA |
| Date of Birth | 1890-02-24 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 85 |
| Deathday | 1975-04-10 |
Marjorie Main Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair | Ma Kettle | 1952-01-01 | Ma and Pa are trying to raise enough money at the county fair to send their daughter Rosie to college. Ma competes in baking and Pa enters a trotter i… |
| Ma and Pa Kettle | Phoebe ‘Ma’ Kettle | 1949-04-01 | The Kettles and their fifteen children are about to be evicted from their rundown rustic home when Pa wins the grand prize by coming up with a new tob… |
| Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki | Ma’ Kettle | 1955-04-01 | Ma and Pa, along with daughter Rosie, go off to Hawaii in answer to cousin Rodney’s call for help running his pineapple farm while he recovers from an… |
| Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation | Ma Kettle | 1953-04-01 | The Kettles are in Paris along with their daughter-in-law’s parents the Parkers. Pa tries to buy racy postcards. He also gets in big trouble when he i… |
| Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town | Ma Kettle | 1950-01-04 | When Pa wins a jingle-writing contest, he and Ma head for New York City. They they get in trouble with gangsters when they lose some stolen money whic… |
| Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm | Ma Kettle | 1951-05-10 | The Kettles leave their ultra-modern home and return to the country looking for uranium. Ma and Tom’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Parker, fight over whether t… |
| The Kettles in the Ozarks | Ma Kettle | 1956-04-01 | Ma and the kids head out to help Pa’s brother Sedgewick with the his farm in Mournful Hollow, Arkansas. Things get tighter when a couple of bootlegger… |
| The Kettles on Old MacDonald’s Farm | Ma Kettle | 1957-05-10 | Ma and Pa do their bit to hook lumberman Brad Johnson up with spoiled socialite Sally Flemming. Ma teaches Sally how to behave like a hick so she’ll b… |
| Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone | Harriet O’Malley | 1950-12-08 | Harriet O’Malley tries to solve a murder aboard a train en route to New York…. |
| Under the Big Top | Sara Post | 1938-08-31 | Director Karl Brown’s 1938 circus drama stars Marjorie Main as a tough, fur-coat-wearing circus boss who raises her orphaned niece to be a trapeze sta… |
| Tish | Miss Letitia ‘Tish’ Carberry | 1942-09-17 | In this comedy, the town gossip fills her time running the lives of others. Naturally, she is also a matchmaker…. |
| Ma and Pa Kettle at Home | Ma Kettle | 1954-03-10 | The Indians try to make a fire in the Kettles fireplace the old fashion way, the smoke signal way. Judges are a comin’ to award a child with a scholar… |
| Ricochet Romance | Pansy Jones | 1954-11-01 | Marjorie Main is the whole show in the Universal programmer Ricochet Romance. Playing the outspoken new cook at a rundown dude ranch, Marjorie forces … |
| Jackass Mail | Clementine ‘Tina’ Tucker | 1942-07-01 | An unknowing orphan idolizes the horse thief/mail robber who has shot his father…. |
| Barnacle Bill | Marge Cavendish | 1941-04-07 | Director Richard Thorpe’s 1941 film stars Wallace Beery as a crusty old San Pedro fisherman, Virginia Weidler as his precocious and motherless daughte… |
| Rationing | Iris Tuttle | 1944-03-24 | A small-town butcher has problems coping with meat rationing…. |
| The Bugle Sounds | Susie ‘Suz’ | 1942-01-30 | An old-time cavalry sergeant’s resistance to change could cost him his post…. |
| Feudin’, Fussin’ and A-Fightin’ | Maribel Mathews | 1948-06-01 | A fast-talking salesman is “kidnapped” by a town, which intends to use him in its annual race with a rival community…. |
| Harry Fox and His Six American Beauties | Statler Hotel Beauty | 1929-07-21 | Harry Fox performs his vaudeville act…. |
| New Deal Rhythm | Arizona Representative | 1933-01-01 | Plotless musical revue celebrating President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration…. |
| Mr. Imperium | Mrs. Cabot | 1951-03-02 | A pretty singer/dancer is becoming an actress whereas the playboy crown prince is becoming a monarch. The both will have their clandestine romance int… |
| The Long, Long Trailer | Mrs. Hittaway | 1954-02-19 | A newly wed couple, Tacy and Nicky, travel in a trailer for their honeymoon. The journey is a humorous one that could end up destroying their marriage… |
| The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap | Widow Hawkins | 1947-10-08 | Chester Wooley and Duke Egan are travelling salesmen who make a stopover in Wagon Gap, Montana while enroute to California. During the stopover, a not… |
| The Egg and I | Phoebe ‘Ma’ Kettle | 1947-05-01 | World War II veteran Bob MacDonald surprises his new wife, Betty, by quitting his city job and moving them to a dilapidated farm in the country. While… |
| The Belle of New York | Mrs Phineas Hill | 1952-02-22 | In squeaky-clean New York at the turn of the century, playboy Charlie Hill falls so much in love that he can walk on air. The object of his affections… |
| Murder, He Says | Mamie Fleagle Smithers Johnson | 1945-01-01 | Pete Marshall is sent as a replacement to the mountain district town of Plainville when a public opinion surveyor who went there goes missing. Visitin… |
| Big Jack | Flapjack Kate | 1949-04-12 | Wallace Beery, in his final film, plays a bandit in this period drama set in Colonial America…. |
| Bad Bascomb | Abbey Hanks | 1946-05-26 | A western bandit is reformed by his love for a little girl…. |
| The Affairs of Martha | Mrs. McKissick | 1942-06-21 | Members of a well-to-do small community become worried when it is revealed that one of their maids is writing a telling exposé…. |
| Little Tough Guy | Mrs. Boylan | 1938-07-22 | The son of a man sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit vows to become a criminal himself. He starts his own street gang, and their crime sp… |
| The Show-Off | Mrs. Fisher | 1946-12-01 | Red Skelton stars in this adaptation of the George Kelly play…. |
| Romance of the Limberlost | Nora | 1938-06-16 | An orphaned girl is being raised in the Limberlost by her aunt, who hates her because the girl’s mother married the man that the aunt loved. The girl’… |
| Gentle Annie | Annie Goss | 1944-12-05 | The Goss family live on a farm they call the dust bowl where the wind blows during the day and the coyotes howl at night. When the train is robbed, ev… |
| Fast Company | Ma Parkson | 1953-05-21 | The temperamental Carol Maldon leaves New York behind to take control of her father’s stable, she inherited. Rick Grayton is a horse racing trainer wh… |
| Johnny Come Lately | ‘Gashouse’ Mary | 1943-09-03 | Cagney is a human dynamo as a drifter who helps save ailing Grace George from losing her newspaper. The pace is fast, and audiences of all ages will b… |
| Heaven Can Wait | Mrs. Strabel | 1943-08-05 | Spoiled playboy Henry van Cleve dies and arrives at the entrance to Hell, a final destination he is sure he deserves after living a life of profligacy… |
| Tennessee Johnson | Mrs. Maude Fisher | 1942-12-01 | The tumultuous presidency of 19th-president Andrew Johnson is chronicled in this biopic. The story begins with Johnson’s boyhood and covers his early … |
| The Law and the Lady | Julia Wortin | 1951-07-20 | A former housemaid (Garson) now works as a confidence trickster, but her plans for a big job in California go awry…. |
| The Man Who Cried Wolf | Amelia Bradley | 1937-08-29 | An actor plots “the perfect crime” by confessing to murders he didn’t commit…. |
| Two Thoroughbreds | Hildegarde ‘Hildy’ Carey | 1939-12-08 | A farm boy trains a wild colt on his own…. |
| Summer Stock | Esme | 1950-08-31 | To Jane Falbury’s New England farm comes a troup of actors to put up a show, invited by Jane’s sister. At first reluctant she has them do farm chores … |
| Undercurrent | Lucy | 1946-11-11 | After a rapid engagement, a dowdy daughter of a chemist weds an industrialist, knowing little of his family or past. He transforms her into an elegant… |
| Honky Tonk | Mrs. Varner | 1941-10-01 | Fast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife’s alcoholic father tries to set things right… |
| The Wild Man of Borneo | Irma, the Cook | 1941-01-24 | A medicine show man tries to con people into believing he’s a legitimate stage actor…. |
| Rose Marie | Lady Jane Dunstock | 1954-03-03 | Rose Marie Lemaitre (Ann Blyth), an orphan living in the Canadian wilderness, falls in love with her guardian, Mike Malone (Howard Keel), an officer o… |
| We Were Dancing | Judge Hawkes | 1942-04-30 | A penniless former princess weds an equally cash-strapped baron, so they support themselves by becoming houseguests at the homes of wealthy American s… |
| Boy of the Streets | Mrs. Mary Brennan | 1938-01-08 | Cocky young street kid worships his father, a sleazy political operative…. |
| Stella Dallas | Mrs. Martin | 1937-08-06 | After divorcing a society man, a small-town woman tries to build a better life for their daughter…. |
| Girls’ School | Miss Armstrong | 1938-09-30 | Wealthy high school girls are sent to a boarding school to learn proper etiquette. Linda Simpson stays out all night. She tells her roommate, Betty Fl… |
| Meet Me in St. Louis | Katie (Maid) | 1944-11-28 | In the year before the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move… |
| A Woman’s Face | Emma Kristiansdotter | 1941-05-09 | A female blackmailer with a disfiguring facial scar meets a plastic surgeon who offers her the possibility of looking like a normal woman…. |
| Dead End | Mrs. Martin | 1937-08-27 | Mobster “Baby Face” Martin returns home to visit the New York neighborhood where he grew up, dropping in on his mother, who rejects him because of his… |
| The Shepherd of the Hills | Granny Becky | 1941-07-18 | Young Matt Masters, an Ozark Mountains moonshiner, hates the father he has never seen, who apparently deserted Matt’s mother and left her to die. His … |
| The Shadow | Hannah Gillespie | 1937-12-22 | Mary Gillespie is restoring the Col. Gillespie Circus to its former splendor after her father’s death. With the help of her publicist boyfriend Jim, t… |
| The Wrong Road | Martha Foster | 1937-10-11 | A young married couple whose plans for their life together haven’t turned out as expected decide to rob the bank where the husband works of $100,000, … |
| Test Pilot | Landlady | 1938-04-16 | Jim is a test pilot. His wife Ann and best friend Gunner try their best to keep him sober. But the life of a test pilot is anything but safe…. |
| Dark Command | Mrs. Cantrell / Mrs. Adams | 1940-04-15 | When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local ba… |
| Close Relations | Woman in Depot (uncredited) | 1933-09-30 | Roscoe believes he is in line to receive a large inheritance, but the reality is considerably more psychopathic– no, nuts…. |
| The World of Abbott and Costello | Widow Hawkins in The Wistful Widow Of Wagon Gap | 1965-04-01 | A compilation of clips from 19 Abbott & Costello features: The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, In the Navy, Hit the Ice, Who Done It?, Abbott and Costello… |
| It’s a Big Country | Mrs. Wrenley | 1951-11-20 | Comprised of eight unrelated episodes of inconsistent quality, this anthology piece of American propaganda features some of MGM Studios’ best director… |
| The Harvey Girls | Sonora Cassidy | 1946-01-18 | On a train trip West to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a “Harvey House” restaurant … |
| Prison Farm | Matron Brand | 1938-06-17 | Shirley Ross plays an innocent young girl convicted for complicity in a crime committed by her boy friend (Lloyd Nolan). The male crook is sentence to… |
| Screen Snapshots (Series 16, No. 1) | Self | 1936-09-11 | Viewers are provided a visit to Ken Maynard’s private circus; Bette Davis poses for her portrait; Frank McHugh plays with his children; a visit to the… |
| Wyoming | Mehitabel | 1940-09-13 | With the army after him and his partner deserting, Reb decides that a change of scenery would be nice so he heads for Wyoming with Dave…. |
| The Captain Is a Lady | Sarah May Willett | 1940-06-21 | Because of a bad investment, Captain and Mrs. Peabody are evicted from their home. Mrs. Peabody finds lodging at a retirement home, but as only single… |
| Penitentiary | Miss Katie Mathews | 1938-02-05 | The story of a D.A. who becomes a prison warden and winds up overseeing the sentence of a man he prosecuted…. |
| The Women | Lucy | 1939-09-01 | A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays…. |
| Lucky Night | Mrs. Briggs | 1939-05-05 | Cora, an heiress who gives it all up for the excitement of looking for a job and living on her own, meets up with unemployed and flat broke Dick. The … |
| Women Without Names | Mrs. Lowery | 1940-03-14 | Joyce and Fred MacNeil’s honeymoon comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt when Fred is accused of murder. Railroaded into prison through the efforts… |
| Too Hot to Handle | Miss Wayne | 1938-09-16 | While in Shanghai reporting on the Sino-Japanese war, Chris Hunter, a shrewd news reporter, meets pilot Alma Harding. She does not trust him, but he m… |
| The Trial of Mary Dugan | Mrs. Collins | 1941-02-14 | Mary Dugan is a young woman accused of murdering her billionaire lover. In the process, his defense lawyer acts wrongly against them, and is replaced … |
| Art Trouble | Woman Who Sits on Painting | 1934-06-23 | Harry Gribbon and Shemp Howard enter the world of fine art in Paris…. |
| I Take This Woman | Gertie | 1940-02-02 | On return from Europe Dr. Decker foils glamour girl Georgi from jumping overboard. At Decker’s suggestion to keep busy, she assists at his clinic i… |
| Turnabout | Nora | 1940-05-17 | Bickering husband and wife Tim and Sally Willows mutter a few angry words to a statue of Buddha and wind up living each other’s life…. |
| A House Divided | Townswoman at Wedding | 1931-12-05 | A New England fisherman’s (Walter Huston) second wife (Helen Chandler) prefers his son (Kent Douglass)…. |
| Susan and God | Mary | 1940-06-07 | A flighty socialite neglects her family to promote a new religious group…. |
| King of the Newsboys | Mrs. Stephens (uncredited) | 1938-03-18 | A poor young man’s girlfriend leaves him for a gangster, who has the money and power she wants and the young man doesn’t have. Determined to show her … |
| Music in the Air | Anna (Uncredited) | 1934-12-13 | A songwriter’s young daughter (June Lang) begins to dream of stardom when she’s offered the lead role in a new operetta…. |
| Broken Lullaby | Frau Schmidt – Townswoman (uncredited) | 1932-01-24 | A young French soldier in World War I is overcome with guilt when he kills a German soldier who, like himself, is a musically gifted conscript, each h… |
| Friendly Persuasion | The Widow Hudspeth | 1956-11-25 | The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It’s not easy for them to meet the … |
| They Shall Have Music | Mrs. Miller | 1939-08-18 | The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the… |
| Angels Wash Their Faces | Mrs. Arkelian | 1939-08-26 | A young man just released from a reformatory moves to a new neighborhood with his sister, intending to start a new life. However, he gets mixed up wit… |
| There Goes My Heart | Fireless Cooker Customer (uncredited) | 1938-10-14 | An heiress takes a job as a department store clerk…. |
| Another Thin Man | Mrs. Dolley (uncredited) | 1939-11-17 | Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate…. |
| Crime without Passion | Backstage Wardrobe Woman | 1934-08-30 | Caddish lawyer Lee Gentry is going out with Katy Costello, but carrying on an affair with dancer Carmen Brown. When he wants to end the dalliance with… |
Credit: TMDB
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