Percy Kilbride(1888-1964)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
He had a long career in theater before making movies, playing hundreds
of roles, mostly rustic bumpkins, in stage and stock. His film career
included two isolated early films:
White Woman (1933) and
Soak the Rich (1936). It began in
earnest with the part of Orion Peabody in the
Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn
wartime drama
Keeper of the Flame (1942);
Kilbride was already fifty-four by then. The movie public really came
to recognize him when he played the part of Pa Kettle (against
Marjorie Main's Ma) in
The Egg and I (1947), a role he
reprised for seven more "Ma and Pa Kettle" movies, the last of which,
and the last of his career, was in 1955.
