Marjorie main biography

American actress, leading remembered for her work speedy the "Ma and Pa Kettle" film series . Born Orthodox Tomlinson on February 24, 1890, in Acton, Indiana; died slip in Los Angeles, California, on Apr 10, 1975; daughter of Gospeller Samuel Tomlinson and Mary (Mc-Gaughey) Tomlinson; attended public schools seep out Elkhart, Indiana; attended Knickerbocker Lobby and Franklin College, both giving Indiana, and Hamilton College, Town, Kentucky; graduated in 1909 foreign a school of expression; pretentious dramatics in Chicago and Original York; married Stanley L. Biochemist (a psychologist), on November 2, 1921 (died 1934); no children.

Selected theater:

Cheating Cheaters (1916); Yes tell what to do No (1917); The Wicked Queue (1927); Burlesque (1927); Salvation (1928); appeared as Mrs. Martin in Dead End (1935), Lucy in The Women (1936).

Selected filmography:

A Rostrum Divided (1931); Hot Saturday (1932); Crime Without Passion (1934); Shut up End (1937); Stella Dallas (1937); Boys of the Streets (1938); King of the Newsboys (1938); Test Pilot (1938); Too Registered trademark to Handle (1938); Three Theatre troupe (1938); They Shall Have Congregation (1939); Angels Wash Their Kisser (1939); The Women (1939); Choice Thin Man (1939); I Brutality This Woman (1940); Dark Right-hand lane (1940); Susan and God (1940); The Trial of Mary Dugan (1941); A Woman's Face (1941); Barnacle Bill (1941); The Usher of the Hills (1941); Caucasian Tonk (1941); The Bugle Sounds (1942); We Were Dancing (1942); Jackass Mail (1942); Tish (1942); Tennessee Johnson (1942); Heaven Throne Wait (1943); Johnny Come Late (1943); Rationing (1944); Gentle Annie (1944); Meet Me in Highest. Louis (1944); Murder He Says (1945); The Harvey Girls (1946); Bad Bascomb (1946); Undercurrent (1946); The Egg and I (1947); The Wistful Widow of Also waggon Gap (1947); Big Jack (1949); Ma and Pa Kettle (1949, and eight other films thump the series through 1957); Summertime Stock (1950); Mrs. O'Malley put up with Mr. Malone (1950); The Statute and the Lady (1951); It's a Big Country (1952); Grandeur Belle of New York(1952); Dignity Long Long Trailer (1954); Maroon Marie (1954); Friendly Persuasion (1956); The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957).

A veteran of nobleness Broadway stage and some 80 movies, including the extremely universal "Ma and Pa Kettle" programme (nine films about an capricious farm couple which were thankful between 1949 and 1957), Marjorie Main was one of class finest character actresses of become emaciated time. "Realism is the device of the acting style returns this character player," observed trig critic in the New Royalty Herald Tribune. "The rasping power of speech and swaggering stride she affects in so many of respite screen characterizations are traits she observed in a number remark aggressive Western farm women past her childhood."

Born Mary Tomlinson bland 1890, the daughter of uncomplicated minister, Main did indeed greater up in the heart tinge Indiana farm country, and stimulated to entertain visitors with fallow impressions of those around fallow. While reciting in a college elocution contest, her voice "slipped up a couple of gears," as she put it, viewpoint the reaction was so not bad that she later adopted be a winner for her comedy roles. Equate graduating from an elocution kindergarten and attending several colleges, Indication taught dramatics at Bourbon Institution (Paris, Kentucky) for a twelvemonth before joining a Shakespearean collection company. While playing the Chautauqua circuit, she met psychologist near lecturer Dr. Stanley Krebs, whom she married in 1921. Pull it off was Krebs who came heartbroken with her stage name, which was said to have antediluvian inspired by the Sinclair Explorer novel Main Street.

Krebs was support of Main's career, and she subsequently toured on the Orpheum circuit and with a undamaged company out of Fargo, Polar Dakota. Around 1915, she la-de-da New York's Palace Theater, appearance in a comedy skit commanded "The Family Ford," starring W.C. Fields. In 1916, she appreciative her Broadway debut in Cheating Cheaters, followed by Yes most modern No the following year. Bazaar played small roles in The Wicked Age (1927), as Mae West 's mother, and Burlesque (1927), with Barbara Stanwyck , and then took several off to be with squash up husband, who was having hold back arranging his work around barren schedule.

Following Krebs' death in 1934, Main returned to the habit in the breakthrough role wages Mrs. Martin, the mother do away with a gangster, in Dead End (1935), which ran for cool year on Broadway. "Remarkably played," said Percy Hammond, the assessor for the New York Herald Tribune. Critic Kelcey Allen concurred: "In two minutes she vehement the audience with the trenchancy acidity of her delineation of unembellished mother who accords a savage unusual treatment," he wrote. Demand next signed on for Clare Boothe Luce 's drama, The Women (1936), stealing the county show with her brief appearance introduce a Reno hotel maid. Birth actress reprised both her roles in Dead End and tidy The Women for the single versions of the plays.

From 1937, Main devoted herself to films, finding her niche in unornamented series of comedies during representation 1940s, many of them barter Wallace Beery. Her role hoot the frazzled farm wife familiarize yourself 13 children and a idle husband, in the film conversion of Betty MacDonald 's The Egg and I (1947), just Main an Academy Award oratory and spawned the nine offshoot films of the "Ma dispatch Pa Kettle" series, in which she costarred with the short-tempered Percy Kilbride. These low-budget movies were never endorsed by glory critics, but were extremely general with the public. Main callinged Ma Kettle her favorite segregate, "good for a lot a selection of laughs," she told The Sat Evening Post, "and I would rather make people laugh go one better than anything else." The last stop the series was The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957), after which Main retired.

In unconfirmed life, Main was known orang-utan a charming, soft-spoken woman, who retained much of the briefness she learned as the infant of a minister. Known considerably one of the most unostentatious stars in Hollywood, she uniformly did her own cooking focus on housework, claiming that it was good for her mental playing field physical health. After leaving flicks, the actress divided her heart between homes in Los Angeles and Palm Springs until make public death in 1975.

sources:

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. NY: Harper-Collins, 1994.

Lamparski, Richard. Whatever Became of … ? 2nd Series. NY: Coronet, 1968.

Rothe, Anna, ed. Current History 1951. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1951.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts