[1] Main started her career in vaudeville and theatre, and appeared in film classics, such as Dead End (1937), The Women (1939), Dark Command (1940), The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and Friendly Persuasion (1956).

[2][3] At the age of three, Tomlinson moved with her family to Indianapolis, Indiana, where her father was pastor of Hillside Christian Church.

After graduation, Tomlinson took a job as a dramatics instructor at Bourbon College in Paris, Kentucky, but stayed only a year.

[5][6] After Tomlinson left Kentucky, she spent the next several years studying dramatic arts in Chicago and New York City, despite her father's disapproval of her career choice.

Tomlinson adopted the stage name of Marjorie Main during her early acting career to avoid embarrassing her family.

"[9] Main's biographer, Michelle Vogel, quotes a later interview in which the actress related: "Dr. Krebs wasn't a very practical man.

[12] Main began her professional career as a performer touring in Chautauqua presentations with a Shakespearean repertory company.

In addition, Main returned to vaudeville to perform at the Palace Theater in a skit called The Family Ford with comedian W. C. Fields.

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.

[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).

These included roles where she was cast as a mother, prison matron, a landlady, aunt, secretary, and a rental agent, among others.

[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.

[20][21] Main is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California, beside her husband, Doctor Stanley Krebs.

[22][23] Main, who is best known for playing "raucous, rough, and cantankerous women" on-screen, was characterized as "soft-spoken, shy," and "dignified" when she was off-screen.

The "cornball humor" of the Kettle films endured in television shows, such as The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, of the 1960s.