Biography
Florence Bates, also credited as Florence Rabe, was an American character actress. Born in San Antonio, Texas, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in mathematics and later became one of the first female lawyers in Texas. After working in radio and running a bakery in Los Angeles with her husband, she began acting in the mid-1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse, adopting her professional name from her first stage role.
Bates made her screen debut in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) as Edythe Van Hopper. She appeared in more than sixty films over the following thirteen years, including The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1943), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), I Remember Mama (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and On the Town (1949). She also had television roles, including a guest appearance on I Love Lucy (1951). She died on 31 January 1954.
