Blanche Bates

Bates, Blanche (1873–1941), actress. The daughter of a theatre manager and an actress, she was born in Portland, Oregon, and made her debut in San Francisco in 1894 as Mrs. Willoughby in The Picture, and then spent several seasons there in T. D. Frawley's stock company. Bates made her New York debut in 1897 as Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew with Augustin Daly's company, later playing such roles as Celia in As You Like It and Lady Sneerwell in The School for Scandal. She first called real attention to herself as Hannah Jacobs in The Children of the Ghetto (1899). Coming under David Belasco's management, Bates played briefly as the flirtatious model Cora in Naughty Anthony (1900), then won wide acclaim as Cho‐Cho‐San in Madame Butterfly. Other notable performances at the turn of the century include the Foreign Legion camp follower Cigarette in Under Two Flags (1910); the forlorn Oriental Yo‐San in The Darling of the Gods; frontier tavern owner Minnie in The Girl of the Golden West (1905); Anna, the wife who destroys the evidence against her embezzling husband, in The Fighting Hope (1908); and Roxanna Clayton, who cannot rid herself of a philandering mate, in Nobody's Widow (1910). Leaving Belasco's management, Bates appeared in Diplomacy (1914), Getting Together (1918), and Medea (1919), performing in vaudeville between legitimate assignments. Among her late successes were the liberated Nancy Fair in The Famous Mrs. Fair (1919); Karen Aldcroft in a play about wife‐switching, The Changelings (1923); and Maisie Partridge, the domineering mother, in Mrs. Partridge Presents (1925). After performing in repertory on the West Coast, Bates temporarily retired, only to return in 1933 to tour as Maud Mockridge, the dinner guest, in Dangerous Corner. Her last New York appearance was in 1933 as Lena, a small role in The Lake. When she appeared in The Darling of the Gods, the Times wrote of the “dark, animated” performer: “The acting of Miss Blanche Bates has, all along, shown a sweet wildness of impulse, a freedom of abandonment, a delightful impetuosity of feeling . . . spontaneous, graceful, alert with vigor and free from all restraint of self‐consciousness and finical prudery.”

Blanche Bates
Born	August 25, 1873(1873-08-25) Portland, Oregon
Died	December 25, 1941 (aged 68) San Francisco, California
Occupation	Stage, film actress
Spouse(s)	George Creel, Milton F. Davis

Blanche Bates (25 August 1873 – 25 December 1941) was an American actress, born at Portland, Ore. She made her début in San Francisco in a benefit performance of Brander Matthews's This Picture and That. Among her early successes were her Mrs. Hillary in The Senator, Phyllis in The Charity Ball, and Nora in A Doll's House. She joined Daly's company in 1898 and the next year at Daly's Theatre, New York, played Mirtza in The Great Ruby. In 1901 she appeared as Cigarette in Under the Two Flags at the Garden Theatre in New York. Thereafter devoting herself to the productions of David Belasco, she won great success in The Darling of the Gods (1902) and The Girl of the Golden West (1905).

In 1902, H.M. Caldwell Company, New York and Boston, published a lavish Blanche Bates Edition of "Under Two Flags" by Ouida, with handsome illustrated covers, and numerous photographs from the play version starring Miss Bates.

Family

In 1900 Bates married Milton F. Davis, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. They had no children and divorced. In 1912 she married George Creel, a journalist and politician, and they had two children, a son George Jr. and a daughter Frances.

Publications

• Strang, Famous Actresses of the Day in America (Boston, 1899)

External links

• Blanche Bates at the Internet Movie Database
• Blanche Bates at the Internet Broadway Database
• Blanche Bates at Find a Grave
• Blanche Bates portrait gallery from NYP Library Billy Rose Collection

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