Percy William Kilbride

 Percy William Kilbride (July 16, 1888 – December 11, 1964)

He made a career of playing country hicks, most memorably as Pa Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle series of feature films. 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. Kilbride followed up the 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. Kilbride retired after filming Ma and Pa Kettle at Home in 1953.

On September 21, 1964, Kilbride and another actor, Ralf Belmont, were struck by a car while crossing the street in Hollywood. Belmont died instantly, while Kilbride died three months later from atherosclerosis and terminal pneumonia which were caused by head injuries. He was 76 years old, never married or had children. A veteran of World War I, Kilbride is buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.