| Frances Bay | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | January 23, 1919 Mannville, Alberta, Canada |
Frances Goffman Bay (born January 23, 1919) is a Canadian-born United States-based character actress known for playing a variety of quirky elderly women on film and television.
Contents |
Personal life
Bay was born in Mannville, Alberta and raised in Dauphin, Manitoba. Her younger brother was the noted sociologist Erving Goffman. Before World War II she acted professionally in Winnipeg 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 died 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 on September 6, 2008, in large part thanks to a petition with 10,000 names that was submitted. She was physically able to attend the ceremony. 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. In 1994, she played Mrs.Pickman in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness.
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 foul-mouthed madam 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. Bay had the opportunity to play Cousin Winifred in the fourth to last episode of Road To Avonlea. She also made an appearance as Mrs. Pickman in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness.
In the Dukes of Hazzard episode, "The Return of Hughie Hogg," Bay played Hortense Coltrane, Boss Hogg's sister-in-law; the previously unmentioned sister of Lulu Coltrane Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane.
In an earlier episode of Seinfeld, she played Mabel Choate, a wealthy, irritable old woman from whom Jerry steals 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 causes his father to be impeached as president of his retirement community in Florida.
She also appeared in an episode of Charmed as an older version of the character Phoebe Halliwell, and in an episode of Grey's Anatomy as an elderly patient that "just wouldn't die" in 2009. In November 2009, she plays Patricia Heaton's character Frankie Heck's Aunt Ginny on The Middle.
References
- ^ Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lady honoured." Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept 6, 2008: R4.
- ^ PASSAGES: Courteney Defends Pee-Wee : People.com
- ^ "Steve Nash, kd lang among new Walk of Fame inductees". CTV News. 2008-06-03. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080603/walk_fame_080603/20080603?hub=TopStories. Retrieved 2008-06-03.
- ^ Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lady honoured." Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept 6, 2008: R4.
- ^ Bay quoted by Michael Posner, "Seinfeld's marble rye lady honoured." Toronto Globe and Mail, Sept 6, 2008: R4.
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
