Frances Bay

All you want to know about Frances Bay

Frances Bay

Born January 1, 1918 (1918-01-01) (age 91)
Manville, Alberta, Canada

Frances Bay (born January 1, 1918) is a Canadian character actress known for playing a variety of quirky elderly women.

Contents

Personal life

Bay was born in Manville, Alberta in 1918 and raised in Dauphin, Manitoba, the daughter of Russian-Canadian Jews who ran a clothing store.[citation needed] Her younger brother was the noted sociologist Erving Goffman. Before World War II she acted professionally in Winnipeg, Manitoba and spent the war hosting the Canadian Broadcasting Company's radio show, "Everybody's Program", aimed at service members overseas. She married businessman Charles (Chuck) Bay in 1934 and moved with him to New York City (where she studied with Uta Hagen), Boston and Los Angeles.[1] Charles and Frances had one son, Josh, who passed away at the age of 23.

Soon after the death of her husband in 2002, she was struck by a car in Glendale, California, and as a result she had to have part of her right leg amputated.[2]

Bay was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, Sept. 6, 2008, in large part thanks to a petition with 10,000 names that was submitted. The selection committee also received personal letters from Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, David Lynch, Henry Winkler, Monty Hall and other celebrities.[3][4]

Early roles

Bay did not appear in films until the age of 60, when she played a small part in 1978's Foul Play, a comedy vehicle for Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. A year earlier, Frances appeared as Mrs. Hamilton in the Christmas television special Christmastime with Mister Rogers. She went on to play small roles in films like The Karate Kid, Big Top Pee-wee and Twins.

Her first major television appearance occurred playing the grandmother to the character of 'Fonzie', in the series Happy Days. Star Henry Winkler is "just a sweet guy. He lost his own grandmother in the Holocaust, and he wrote me a letter saying I was his virtual grandmother."[5]

In 1983, she played the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood in Faerie Tale Theatre for Showtime.

Work with David Lynch

In 1986, Bay appeared as the doddery aunt of Kyle MacLachlan's character in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. This role seems to have endeared the actress to Lynch, who recast her in several subsequent works, including as a brisk no-nonsense madam (who uses the "F" word) in Wild at Heart, and as the eerie "Mrs. Tremond" on Twin Peaks and its movie spin-off, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Notable roles

Bay may also be familiar from her performance in the music video for Jimmy Fallon's comedy song, Idiot Boyfriend. Bay is perhaps best known today, however, for her performance as the hapless, but loving grandmother of Adam Sandler's character in the 1996 film Happy Gilmore. Additionally, she has the distinction of appearing in the final episodes of three long-running sitcoms: Happy Days, Who's the Boss? and Seinfeld.

In an earlier episode of Seinfeld, she played "Mabel Choate", a wealthy, irritable old woman from whom Jerry stole a loaf of marbled rye bread. In that episode, entitled The Rye, Bay appeared with her former Twin Peaks co-stars Grace Zabriskie and Warren Frost. In a future episode, the consequences of Jerry's act caused his father to be impeached as president of his retirement community in Florida. She also appeared in a episode of Charmed as an older version of Phoebe Halliwell (Alyssa Milano).

References

  1. ^ Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lad honoured." Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept 6, 2008: R4.
  2. ^ PASSAGES: Courteney Defends Pee-Wee : People.com
  3. ^ "Steve Nash, kd lang among new Walk of Fame inductees" (2008-06-03). Retrieved on 2008-06-03.
  4. ^ Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lad honoured." Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept 6, 2008: R4.
  5. ^ Bay quoted by Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lad honoured." Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept 6, 2008: R4.

External links

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The Karate Kid series
Films
Characters
Cast
Crew
Music
Related
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Bay"

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