Florence Bates

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Florence Bates (born April 15, 1888 in San Antonio , Texas , † January 31, 1954 in Burbank , California ; actually Florence Rabe ) was an American film actress .

Life

Florence Bates was born the second daughter of Jewish immigrants in San Antonio, Texas. As a child she played the piano; due to a hand injury, however, she had to give up her plans to become a successful concert pianist. After studying mathematics at the University of Texas , which she successfully completed in 1906, she worked as a teacher. In 1909 she married her first husband and soon after gave up her job to look after their daughter Ann. However, when the marriage ended in divorce, Bates took up law school and graduated in 1914 after just six months. At 26, she was one of the first women to earn a living as a lawyer in Texas. She worked in this profession for four years. After the death of her parents, she and her sister took over the family's own antique shop. When her sister died and the Great Depression set in, Bates was forced to close the antique shop in 1929. In the same year she married William F. Jacoby, a businessman who had made his fortune in Texas with oil. When the latter lost his fortune, he and Bates moved to Los Angeles , where they opened a bakery.

In the mid-1930s, when Bates was over 40, Bates wanted to prove himself as an actress. From then on she was seen several times on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse. When she played the role of Miss Bates in a theater adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma , she took the stage name Florence Bates, derived from her role. In 1940 she had her first notable screen appearance as the vain Mrs. Van Hopper in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca alongside Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier . In the following 13 years she was seen as a character actress in more than 60 films. Mostly she played matronly and wealthy women as in the two Lubitsch film comedies A Heavenly Sinner (1943) and Cluny Brown on Free Feet (1946).

Their only daughter, Ann, died in childbed in the 1940s . After the death of her second husband in 1951, Bates' own health deteriorated. She still appeared in television series such as I Love Lucy (1952). She died of a heart attack in 1954 at the age of 65 . Her grave is in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale , California.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Axel Nissen: Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Forties . McFarland & Company Inc., 2007, ISBN 0-78642-746-9 , pp. 32-33.

Web links

Commons : Florence Bates  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Bates, Florence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rabe, Florence (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH San Antonio , Texas , United States
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1954
Place of death Burbank , California , United States