Marjorie Main

Marjorie Main, born Mary Tomlinson on February 24, 1890, near Acton in rural Marion County, Indiana, was an American character actress and singer whose career spanned vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood. She was the second daughter of Reverend Samuel J. Tomlinson, a Disciples of Christ minister, and Jennie L. McGaughey Tomlinson. Her maternal grandfather, Dr. Samuel McGaughey, was the local physician who delivered her. The family relocated to Indianapolis when Main was three, where her father served as pastor of Hillside Christian Church, and later moved to Goshen and then Elkhart before settling on a farm near Fairland, Indiana, in the early 1900s.

Main attended public schools in Fairland and Shelbyville before spending a year at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, from 1905 to 1906, where she was a charter member of what became the Delta Delta Delta sorority. She then transferred to the Hamilton School of Dramatic Expression in Lexington, Kentucky, completing a three-year course of study in 1909 at age nineteen. She briefly held a position as a dramatics instructor at Bourbon College in Paris, Kentucky, before departing after approximately one year. She subsequently pursued dramatic arts training in both Chicago and New York City, adopting the stage name Marjorie Main to avoid bringing embarrassment to her family, particularly her father, who disapproved of her career choice.

Main launched her professional performing career touring in Chautauqua presentations with a Shakespearean repertory company, and also spent five months performing with a stock company in Fargo, North Dakota, before transitioning into vaudeville. In 1916, she toured in Cheating Cheaters alongside John Barrymore, and in 1918 made her Broadway debut in Yes or No. She also performed at the Palace Theater in a vaudeville skit called The Family Ford with comedian W. C. Fields. Though not every early production succeeded — A House Divided closed in 1923 after a single performance — Main continued building her stage career. In 1927 she played Mae West's mother in The Wicked Age, and in 1928 appeared opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the long-running Burlesque.

Main's Broadway career, which extended from 1928 to 1936, included appearances in Salvation in 1928, Scarlet Sister Mary in 1930, Ebb Tide in 1931, Music in the Air in 1932, and This Man's Town, among other productions. Her most prominent stage role during this period was Mrs. Martin, the mother of gangster Baby Face Martin, in Dead End, which she performed for 460 performances beginning in 1935 before leaving the production in 1936. She followed that engagement by playing Lucy, a hotel-keeper and dude-ranch operator, in The Women.

On November 2, 1921, Main married Stanley LeFevre Krebs, a widower who worked as a psychologist and lecturer, having met him while performing on the Chautauqua circuit. The couple made their home in New York City and had no children. Main managed the logistical demands of their life on the road while Krebs lectured, and she described the years of their marriage as the happiest of her life, continuing to perform with touring companies and in New York theaters on a part-time basis throughout. Krebs died of cancer on September 26, 1935, after which Main returned to acting on a full-time basis. Main's biographer Michelle Vogel also revealed that Main had a long-term relationship with actress Spring Byington.

Main began her film career in 1931, appearing as an extra in A House Divided. Subsequent film appearances included Take a Chance in 1933 and Crime Without Passion in 1934, as well as a supporting role in the film version of Music in the Air, also in 1934, though most of her performance was cut. Samuel Goldwyn signed her to reprise her stage role as a gangster's mother in the 1937 film version of Dead End, in which Humphrey Bogart played her son, and she again transferred her stage work to screen in The Women in 1939. In 1940, following her starring role opposite Wallace Beery in Wyoming, Main signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She also appeared that year in Dark Command alongside Walter Pidgeon. MGM subsequently paired her with Beery in six additional films during the mid-1940s, including Barnacle Bill in 1941, Jackass Mail in 1942, and Bad Bascomb in 1946. Other notable MGM appearances included Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944 and The Harvey Girls in 1946, in which she played chief cook Sonora Cassidy.

Main's most enduring screen role came when MGM loaned her to Universal Pictures to play Ma Kettle in The Egg and I in 1947, starring alongside Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, with Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The characters proved sufficiently popular that Universal developed a film series around them, and Main portrayed Ma Kettle in nine additional films between 1949 and 1957. Kilbride appeared as her co-star through the seventh film, Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki in 1955, after which Main filmed The Kettles in the Ozarks in 1956 without him. Parker Fennelly took over the role of Pa Kettle for the final entry, The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm in 1957. Each film in the series grossed Universal approximately three million dollars, a revenue stream credited with helping stabilize the studio financially. Beyond performing, Main contributed to the productions by writing portions of her own dialogue and designing her own costumes and makeup.

During World War II, Main used her stage and film prominence to support the U.S. War Department's war bond sales effort. In December 1942, she returned to central Indiana and helped facilitate the sale of more than five hundred thousand dollars in war bonds. Off-screen, Main was described by contemporaries as soft-spoken, shy, and dignified — a contrast to the raucous, rough, and cantankerous characters she typically portrayed on film. She died on April 10, 1975.