Marjorie Main & Wallace Beery

Just two weeks after his 64th birthday in April 1949 and just a few days after the theatrical release of the movie Big Jack, in which he played his final movie role, Wallace Beery died, leaving behind a legacy of well over 200 screen appearances. He began his movie career in 1913 and the bulk of his output (nearly 150 film appearances) comes from the silent era. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for his many speaking roles in the more than 50 films of the 30s and 40s where he is usually found playing a lovable, oddly romantic and unfaithful, easily foiled, invariably mendacious, yet heroic, stalwart. And it is in seven of these roles (including his very last) that he is not only all those things, but is also teamed with an indomitable counterpart: an inevitably constant and endearing gadfly Marjorie Main. Ms. Main would go on to greater fame when she teamed her steamroller persona with the hurry-up-and-go-slow character Percy Kilbride portrays in the Ma and Pa Kettle series, but that greater fame does not diminish the success she enjoyed with Wallace Beery or any of the fire and flame that charmed audiences throughout the 1940s whenever she and Mr. Beery shared a screen. Here is a list of their collaborations:

Wyoming (1940)
Barnacle Bill (1941)
The Bugle Sounds (1942)
Jackass Mail (1942)
Rationing (1944)
Bad Bascomb (1946)
Big Jack (1949)