Marjorie Main

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Marjorie Main was the stage name of Mary Tomlinson (February 24, 1890 – April 10, 1975), who played an American character actress and singer of the Classical Hollywood period, best known as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract actress in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as her appearances as Ma Kettle in ten Ma and Pa Kettle films.

Main began her career in vaindeville and theatre, and appeared in films including Dead End (1937), The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), and Friendly Persuasion (1956).

Early life

Mary Tomlinson was born near Acton on February 24, 1890, in rural Marion County, Indiana. Jennie L. Tomlinson, the second daughter of Reverend Samuel J. Tomlinson, a Disciples of Christ minister, and Jennie L. (McGaughey) Tomlinson. Doctor Samuel McGaughey, Mary's maternal grandfather, was the Acton doctor who delivered her.

Tomlinson and her family moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where her father was minister of Hillside Christian Church at the age of three. They migrated to Goshen and then Elkhart, Indiana, four years later. The Tomlinson family first lived on a farm near Fairland, Indiana, in the early 1900s.

Tomlinson spent a year (1905–06) at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, where she was a charter member of the Delta Delta Delta Sorority of today's Franklin College, before heading to the Hamilton School of Dramatic Expression in Lexington, Kentucky. At the age of nineteen, she completed a three-year course of study. After graduation, Tomlinson began teaching at Bourbon College in Paris, Kentucky, but it was only for a year. After asking for a salary increase, Tomlinson later claimed she was fired from the job.

Despite her father's disapproving of her career choice, Tomlinson spent the next several years studying dramatic arts in Chicago and New York City. Tomlinson used the stage name Marjorie Main to avoid offending her family.

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Career

Main began her professional life as a performer in Chautauqua with a Shakespearean repertory company. She began working in vaudeville after five months as a stock broker in Fargo, North Dakota.

Main appeared in many productions during the 1920s, including visiting Cheating Cheaters with John Barrymore in 1916. In 1918, she appeared in Yes or No in the Broadway theatre. In addition, Main returned to vaudeville to appear at the Palace Theater in a skit called The Family Ford starring comedian W. C. Fields. Not all of the early plays in which she appeared to be a hit. After just one performance, a House Divided closed in 1923, but Main continued to look for work on Broadway. In 1927, she appeared in Mae West's mother in The Wicked Age, and in 1928 she appeared opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the long-running stage hit Burlesque. Main appeared in many other Broadway shows including Salvation in 1928, Scarlet Sister Mary in 1930, Ebb Tide in 1932, and Jackson White in 1932.

Mrs. Martin, the mother of gangster Baby Face Martin, was one of Main's highest-profile theatre performances in 1935. She appeared in 460 productions before deciding to play Lucy, a hotel keeper/ranch operator in The Women. These two roles were first introduced in film productions of the plays in 1937 and 1939, respectively.

In A House Divided (1931), one of Main's first feature film appearances was as an extra. She appeared in Take A Chance (1933) and Crime Without Passion (1934), and she re-created her stage role as a servant in the film version of Music in the Air (also 1934). However, the majority of her appearance was cut from the film. Main appeared in a few more films in Hollywood in the 1930s before returning to the stage in New York City.

For the film version of Dead End (1937), Samuel Goldwyn signed Main to reprise her stage appearance as the mother of a gangster. Humphrey Bogart was played as her son in the film Humphrey Bogart. In The Women (1939), she brought another good stage presence to film as the dude-ranch operator.

In subsequent films for various studios, Main portrayed a diverse range of characters. Among others, she was cast as a mother, a prison matron, a landlady, aunt, secretary, and a rental agent.

Main was signed to a seven-year Metro-Mayer contract in 1940 after appearing with Wallace Beery in Wyoming (1940). She appeared in six major films in 1941, co-starring Dark Command (1940) with Walter Pidgeon and co-starring Dark Command (1940).

Main helped promote the selling of war bonds for the US War Department during World War II. In December 1942, she returned to central Indiana, where she was instrumental in the selling of more than $500,000 in war bonds.

MGM starred Main opposite Beery in six more films, including Barnacle Bill (1941), Jackass Mail (1942), and Bad Bascomb (1946). In The Harvey Girls (1946), she played Sonora Cassidy, the chief cook.

In the Ma and Pa Kettle film series, Ma Kettle was the main character. She had been with MGM for another seven years, which continued into the 1950s, when the studio loaned her to Universal Pictures to play Ma Kettle for the first time in The Egg and I (1947), starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. Main starred in the film opposite Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Universal decided to do a series after the two Kettle characters were so popular among film audiences that we had to do a sequel. In nine Ma and Pa Kettle films between 1949 and 1957, Main portrayed the Ma Kettle character. Kilbride was her co-star in most of the films but she was forced to leave after Ma and Pa Kettle (1955), the seventh in the series. Without Kilbride, the main shot of The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956). In the last film of the series, Parker Fennelly appeared as Partial in the role opposite Main, The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957) Each film grossed Universal about $3 million, which saved the studio from bankruptcy. Main wrote some of the dialogue for her character and created her costumes and make-up in addition to acting in the films.

During this period, the Main Shuttle bouncing between Universal Studios and MGM went back and forth between Universal Studios and MGM. During the 1940s and early 1950s, she appeared in many Metro musicals, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Belle of New York (1952). In the studio's all-star film It's a Big Country (1951), she played Mrs. Wrenley. Main appeared in The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and as Jane Dunstock in Rose Marie (1954). In the hit film Friendly Persuasion (1956), the widow Hudspeth was portrayed by the main. In The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957), the main's last film appearance was in her best-known role as Ma Kettle. (1957)

She appeared on Norman Corwin's radio show We Hold This Truths on December 15, 1941. She has appeared in The Goldbergs before.

Cassie Tanner, a rugged frontierswoman, appeared in the television series "The Cassie Tanner Story" and "The Sacramento Story" in 1958.

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