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Percy Kilbride

Percy Kilbride
PercyKilbride.jpg
as Pa Kettle (1947–1955)
Born Percy William Kilbride
(1888-07-16)July 16, 1888
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died December 11, 1964(1964-12-11) (aged 76)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death Atherosclerosis and terminal pneumonia
Resting place Golden Gate National Cemetery
Occupation Actor
Years active 1928–55

Percy William Kilbride (July 16, 1888 – December 11, 1964) was an American character actor. He made a career of playing country hicks, most memorably as Pa Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle series of feature films.

Kilbride was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Elizabeth (née Kelly), a native of Maryland, and Owen Kilbride, a Canadian.

Kilbride began working in the theater at the age of 12 and eventually left to become an actor on Broadway. He first played an 18th-century French dandy in A Tale of Two Cities. His film debut was as Jakey in White Woman (1933), a Pre-Code film starring Carole Lombard. He left Broadway for good in 1942, when Jack Benny insisted that Kilbride reprise his Broadway role in the film version of George Washington Slept Here. According to Benny, Percy Kilbride was the same character offscreen and on: quiet and friendly but principled, refusing to be paid more or less than what he considered a fair salary. Kilbride followed up the Benny film with a featured role in the Olsen and Johnson comedy Crazy House (1943). In 1945, he appeared in The Southerner.

In 1947, he and Marjorie Main appeared in The Egg and I, starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert as a sophisticated couple taking on farm life. Main and Kilbride were featured as folksy neighbors Ma and Pa Kettle, and audience response prompted the popular Ma and Pa Kettle series. Pa Kettle became Kilbride's most famous role: the gentle-spirited Pa seldom raised his voice, and was always ready to help friends—by borrowing from "other" friends, or assigning any kind of labor to his Indian friends Geoduck and Crowbar.


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