Early years

Main began her professional career as a performer touring in Chautauqua presentations with a Shakespearean repertory company. After performing for five months in a stock company in Fargo, North Dakota, she began working in vaudeville.^[8][9]

Stage actress

In the mid 1910s, Main appeared in several plays, which included touring in Cheating Cheaters with John Barrymore in 1916. She also debuted in the Broadway theatre in Yes or No in 1918. In addition, Main returned to vaudeville to perform at the Palace Theater in a skit called The Family Ford with comedian W. C. Fields. Not all of the early plays in which she appeared were a success. A House Divided closed in 1923 after just one performance, but Main continued to find work on the Broadway stage. In 1927, she played Mae West's mother in The Wicked Age, and in 1928, played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the long-running stage hit Burlesque. Main also appeared in several other Broadway productions: Salvation in 1928, Scarlet Sister Mary in 1930, Ebb Tide in 1931, Music in the Air in 1932, and Jackson White.^[4][9]

One of Main's highest-profile stage performances was in 1935's Dead End as Mrs. Martin, the mother of gangster Baby Face Martin. She played the role in 460 performances before leaving the show in 1936 to play Lucy, a hotel-keeper/dude-ranch operator, in The Women. Main recreated these two roles in film versions of the plays in 1937 and 1939, respectively.^[10][13]

Film career

One of Main's first feature-film appearances was as an extra in A House Divided (1931).^[8][6][14] She also appeared in Take A Chance (1933) and Crime Without Passion (1934), and recreated her stage role as a servant in the film version of Music in the Air (also 1934), but most of her performance was cut from the film. Main also made a few more films in Hollywood in the 1930s before returning to the stage in New York City.^[9][10]

Samuel Goldwyn signed Main to reprise her stage role as the mother of a gangster for the film version of Dead End (1937). Humphrey Bogart was cast as her son. She transferred another strong stage performance to film as the dude-ranch operator in The Women (1939).^[10][15]

Main portrayed a diverse set of characters in subsequent films for different studios. These included roles where she was cast as a mother, prison matron, a landlady, aunt, secretary, and a rental agent, among others.^[10]

Main was signed to a seven-year Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) contract in 1940, after starring with Wallace Beery in Wyoming (1940).^[8] She also co-starred in Dark Command (1940) with Walter Pidgeon, and appeared in six major films in 1941.^[15][16]

During World War II, Main used her stage and film notoriety to help promote the sale of war bonds for the U.S. War Department. In December 1942, she returned for a visit to central Indiana, where she helped in the sale of more than $500,000 in war bonds.^[15]

In the mid-1940s, in an attempt to repeat the great success Wallace Beery had in teaming with Marie Dressler in the early 1930s, MGM cast Main opposite Beery in six more films, including Barnacle Bill (1941), Jackass Mail (1942), and Bad Bascomb (1946). She also played Sonora Cassidy, the chief cook, in The Harvey Girls (1946).^[17]

Main's best-known role was Ma Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle film series.^[8] She had renewed her contract with MGM for another seven years, which continued until the mid-1950s, when the studio lent 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 played opposite Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in the film.^[16]

The two Kettle characters proved to be so popular among film audiences that Universal decided to do a series. Main portrayed the Ma Kettle character in nine Ma and Pa Kettle films between 1949 and 1957. Kilbride was her co-star in most of the films, but left after Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955), the seventh in the series.^[18] Main filmed The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956) without Kilbride. Parker Fennelly played the Pa Kettle role opposite Main in the final film of the series, The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957)^[17] Each film grossed Universal about $3 million, which helped save the studio from a financial collapse. In addition to acting in the films, Main wrote some of the dialogue for her character and created her costumes and make-up.^[15]

During this time, Main shuttled back and forth between Universal Studios and MGM. She appeared in several MGM musicals during the 1940s and early 1950s, including, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Belle of New York (1952). She played Mrs. Wrenley in the studio's all-star film It's a Big Country (1951). Main played her last roles for MGM as Mrs. Hittaway in The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and as Jane Dunstock in Rose Marie (1954). Main portrayed the widow Hudspeth in the hit film Friendly Persuasion (1956). Main's final film appearance was in her best-known role as Ma Kettle in The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957)^[6]

Radio and television appearances

On December 15, 1941, she was part of the cast of Norman Corwin's radio program We Hold These Truths.^[19] She also performed in The Goldbergs.^{[citation needed]}

In 1958, Main appeared as a rugged frontierswoman Cassie Tanner in the episodes "The Cassie Tanner Story" and S1 E39 "The Sacramento Story" of the television series Wagon Train.

Film

Television