Frances Bay | Popular actress, 92
Frances Bay, 92, a housewife who became a successful actress in middle age, appearing in more than 50 motion pictures and 100 television shows, including roles as the "marble rye lady" on Seinfeld and the grandmother in Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore ," died Thursday at a hospital in California's San Fernando Valley.
Frances Bay, 92, a housewife who became a successful actress in middle age, appearing in more than 50 motion pictures and 100 television shows, including roles as the "marble rye lady" on Seinfeld and the grandmother in Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore," died Thursday at a hospital in California's San Fernando Valley.
Ms. Bay had been ill with various infections. The actress, whose right leg was amputated below the knee after she was struck by a car in 2002, had been active until recently, appearing regularly as Aunt Ginny in the ABC sitcom The Middle.
Born in Mannville, Alberta, the shy, diminutive Ms. Bay began acting in Winnipeg, Manitoba - voicing princesses on radio shows - and then in Toronto. When she married her childhood sweetheart, businessman Charles Bay, she shelved her aspirations and became a homemaker when his job took them to the United States.
In the 1970s, when the couple was living in Manhattan, she resumed her acting studies, working with drama teacher Uta Hagen, and when the Bays moved to Boston, she began acting in dinner theater, summer stock, and radio. With renewed determination, in 1973 Ms. Bay sought - and got - agents and jobs in New York.
Two years later, when the couple moved to Los Angeles, Ms. Bay's career began to skyrocket.
She landed a role in the 1978 motion picture Foul Play starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, and later moved into television with appearances on The Jeffersons, The Dukes of Hazzard, and as Fonzie's Grandma Nussbaum in Happy Days.
- Los Angeles Times