Frances Bay

Frances Bay (born January 23, 1919) is a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky elderly women on film and television. Bay was born Frances Goffman in Mannville, Alberta and raised in Dauphin, Manitoba. Her younger brother was the 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 and moved to New York City (where she studied with Uta Hagen), Boston and Los Angeles. Charles and Frances Bay 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. She was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame on September 6, 2008, in large part thanks to a petition with 10,000 names which was submitted on her behalf.