Education
In 1906, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Mathematics, after which she taught school.
In 1906, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Mathematics, after which she taught school.
Born Florence Rabe in San Antonio, Texas, the second child of Jewish immigrants, Bates showed musical talent as a child, but a hand injury inhibited her from continuing her piano studies. When that marriage ended in divorce, she began to study Law and passed the bar examination in 1914, becoming at the age of 26 the first female lawyer in her home state. She practiced law for four years in San Antonio.
She became a bilingual (English-Spanish) radio commentator whose program was designed to foster good relations between the United States and Mexico.
When he lost his fortune, the couple moved to Los Angeles and opened a bakery, which proved a successful venture, until they sold it in the 1940s. When she decided to continue working with the theatre group, she changed her professional name to that of the first character she played on stage.
In 1939, she was introduced to Alfred Hitchcock, who cast her in her first major screen role, the vain dowager Mistress Van Hopper, in. Bates appeared in more than sixty films over the course of the next thirteen years.
Among her cinema credits are Kitty Foyle, Love Crazy, The Moon and Sixpence, Mr.
Lucky, Heaven Can Wait, Lullaby of Broadway, Mister Big, Since You Went Away, Kismet, Saratoga Trunk, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Winter Meeting, I Remember Mama, Portrait of Jennie, A Letter to Three Wives, On the Town, and Les Misérables.