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Percy Kilbride
Percy Kilbride
	Kilbride in 1910
Born	Percy William Kilbride; July 16, 1888; San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	December 11, 1964 (aged 76); Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Golden Gate National Cemetery
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1928–1955

Percy William Kilbride^[1] (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.

Early life

Kilbride was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Elizabeth (née Kelly), a native of Maryland, and Owen Kilbride, a Canadian.^[1]^[2]

Career

Kilbride began working in the theater in 1900, at the age of 12, as a call boy at San Francisco's Central Theatre. After five years on the San Francisco stage, he played light-comedy roles for stock companies in Boston, Albany, Syracuse, Trenton, and Philadelphia,^[3] and eventually left to become an actor on Broadway.^[4] He first played an 18th-century French dandy in A Tale of Two Cities.^[4] 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.^[5] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 and incredibly lazy 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 American Indian friends Geoduck and Crowbar.

Because Universal insisted on releasing only one Kettle feature annually, during the spring months, there was already a backlog of unreleased pictures. Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki, filmed in February 1952, wasn't released for another three years. Kilbride withdrew from the series in 1953^[6] after filming Ma and Pa Kettle Hit the Road Home. It was released in 1954 as Ma and Pa Kettle at Home.

Kilbride retired only from Pa Kettle, not from acting. Although the Kettle films were lucrative and "Kilbride has had a lot of fun making them," wrote columnist Frank Scully, "they have cost him a lot of fat parts on the home lot and elsewhere. He was picked for Return of the Texan only to be shelved for Walter Brennan because the front office thought it would be too tough a job getting that shiftless Kettle out of the public mind."^[7] In a 1953 interview, Kilbride discussed the monotony of his career due to his portrayal of Pa Kettle:

I had my training on the stage, where I did a variety of roles. That's the fun of being an actor: to meet the challenge of creating new characters. But Pa Kettle is always the same. He can do anything; there is no need to establish any motivation. There's no kick in doing him over and over again. I have had dozens of offers to do television series, but I have turned them all down. I might do one-shot appearances; but I won't let myself get tied down to one character.^[8]

Kilbride had tried to break away from Pa Kettle, playing character roles in other films through 1950, but he became so familiar in the Kettle pictures that he wound up playing that role almost exclusively. The one exception was a 1952 industrial film promoting home appliances; Kilbride's dry delivery provided, appropriately enough, a voice for a dehumidifier.^{[citation needed]}

Kilbride lived alone in an apartment on Whitley Avenue in Los Angeles, just off Hollywood Boulevard. Pa Kettle was even a dangerous influence on his personal life: "I've reached the time in life when I should own a house and settle down, but I know that Kettle virus would paralyze me when it came to mowing a lawn, sweeping off a porch, or changing a light bulb."^[9]

Death

On September 21, 1964, Kilbride and another actor, Ralph Belmont, were struck by a motorist while crossing the street in Hollywood.^[10]

Belmont died instantly; Kilbride died three months later from atherosclerosis and terminal pneumonia which were caused by head injuries, having undergone brain surgery at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles on November 11, aged 76.^[11]

A veteran of World War I, Kilbride was buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. Kilbride, who never married, left his estate to four nephews and a sister-in-law. ^[12]

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1933	White Woman	Jakey
1936	Soak the Rich	Everett, 2d detective
1942	George Washington Slept Here	Mr. 'Kimbie' Kimber, the Handyman
1942	Keeper of the Flame	Orion Peabody
1943	Crazy House	Col. Cornelius Merriweather
1943	The Woman of the Town	Rev. Samuel Small
1944	Knickerbocker Holiday	Schermerhorn
	The Adventures of Mark Twain	Billings, Enterprise Typesetter
	She's a Soldier Too	Jonathan Kittredge
	Guest in the House	John – the Butler
1945	The Southerner	Harmie
	State Fair	Dave Miller
	Fallen Angel	Pop
	She Wouldn't Say Yes	Judge Whittaker
1946	The Well-Groomed Bride	Mr. Dawson
1947	The Egg and I	Franklin "Pa" Kettle
	Welcome Stranger	Nat Dorkas
	Riffraff	Pop
1948	You Were Meant for Me	Mr. Andrew Mayhew
	Black Bart	Jersey Brady
	Feudin', Fussin', and A-Fightin'	Billy Caswell
	You Gotta Stay Happy	Mr. Racknell
1949	The Sun Comes Up	Mr. Willie B. Williegood
	Ma and Pa Kettle	Pa Kettle
	Mr. Soft Touch	Rickle
	Free for All	Henry J. Abbott
1950	Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town	Pa Kettle
1950	Riding High	Pop Jones
1951	Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm	Pa Kettle
1952	Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair	Pa Kettle
1952	Ellis in Freedomland	The Dehumidifier	Voice
1953	Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation	Pa Kettle
1954	Ma and Pa Kettle at Home		Final film role
1955	Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki		Filmed in 1952; held back from release