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Community Corner

Acting 101 with Frances Bay, 92

Studio City actress Frances Bay—(Happy Gilmore's Grandma and Seinfeld's Marble Rye Lady)—met with aspiring dog starlet Heidi this week to offer professional career advice.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Heidi and Diane are on vacation, and so we're running a BEST OF  ' and it's appropriate that we look back at a lovely time they had with actress, who recently passed away. So, that is why we're reminiscing over this column. Enjoy!)

 

Frances Bay clasped her birdlike hands and laughed with delight as Heidi demonstrated “playing dead” in her airy living room in the Studio City hills.  Just like Frances, Heidi is a performer—and her training includes falling over, lifeless, when her trainer (that would be me) points a fictional gun (that would be my hand) and yells: “BANG!”

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Of course, the fact that Frances was laughing may have meant the dog’s performance was not as heartbreaking as I had hoped. Heidi tends to take her time when she expires, first going into the "down" position, then tipping over very slowly and landing with a thud on her side.  She then immediately pops her head up to see whether she will get a treat as a reward for dying on cue.  This, along with her big toothy grin, tends to compromise the believability of the scene.

But Frances was willing to be patient with Heidi’s enthusiastic efforts.

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“I needed a lot of training, too!” Frances said, fondly recalling a special teacher who urged her to perform in grade school back in her snowy hometown, tiny Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada.  "I love work! I want to work, but I’m so old—I don’t get much anymore.  But I still love acting. I still love it!”

Frances celebrated her 92nd birthday in January.  Heidi turns 9 on May 1—at least, that's our best guess for this rescue dog, based on a vet's evaluation.  Frances gave a knowing smile when I said it's hard for a dog of a certain age to get work, too.

Bay can boast numerous theater credits, both off Broadway and in greater L.A., but is probably best known for her Hollywood roles as Adam Sandler's grandmother in the movie Happy Gilmore, as the elderly aunt in Blue Velvet and for a guest role on Seinfeld as the little old lady that Jerry Seinfeld mugs to steal her loaf of marble rye bread in the episode "The Rye." With her tiny physique and wickedly zany smile, she’s made a career of playing the eccentric little old lady.

But that was before November 2002, just before Thanksgiving, when Frances was mowed down by a teenage driver while crossing a busy Glendale street. She suffered head injuries, multiple broken bones and lost her right leg below the knee.  This accident happened shortly after she lost her husband, businessman Chuck Bay, her childhood sweetheart from Dauphin.  Miraculously, she came out of a coma and recovered.

And she’s still a working actress: Frances occasionally appears as Aunt Ginny on the ABC comedy The Middle.

Heidi was excited about going to visit Frances for acting advice – although, frankly, Heidi is excited to go anywhere. But Heidi has known Frances for a long time, as have I. We met at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's New Playwrights Conference in the summer of 1983 when she was one of the actors and I was on a fellowship to study theater criticism. 

And a few years ago, Heidi and I went to visit Frances on a regular basis to interview her for the nonfiction book The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life, which I co-authored with Elder Wisdom Circle founder Doug Meckelson.  We also called on her acting expertise for a promotional video for the organization, which you can watch here.

Heidi has always loved to sit at the foot of Frances’ motorized wheelchair and listen with rapt attention to anything Frances has to say. The dog seems to know instinctively to be extra gentle when she takes a biscuit from Frances' delicate fingers. During this visit, Frances told Heidi she was beautiful, but pointed out that while beauty might be enough to make a girl a Hollywood star, it won’t make her into a serious actress.

“You have to have much more,” Frances said.

Frances also regaled us with stories of studying acting with the legendary Uta Hagen and Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya, who was tough but inspirational.  And she revealed a deep, dark secret: so many years ago, Frances had a crush on a fellow student  in Ouspenskaya's class named Al Pacino.

Frances fretted that it might be improper to mention the crush – after all, she was happily married at the time and never breathed a word of this to Chuck. Don’t worry, I told her; there are plenty of happily married women with crushes on Al Pacino.

A note to Mr. Pacino: Frances is now single.  And she’d really like to be in your next movie. As she is fond of saying: “I’m an old actress, but not retired!”

(Watch videos above about Frances' career and her Elder Wisdom group.)

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