Career
She signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1942 which began her career in films both in bit parts and larger roles. She began her acting career while attending San Mateo Junior College, with roles on radio soap operas produced in San Francisco. Bates had the lead role, and supplied the signature scream, on the radio mystery series Whodunit.
She also had her film debut in 1943, in a Boston Blackie mystery, The Chance of a Lifetime.
She played Bela Lugosi"s first victim in, Diana Palmer in, and she had a minor role in of a Salesman (1951). Bates worked steadily in television beginning in the 1950s, including an appearance on the syndicated western series The Range Rider, and thereafter on episodes of National Broadcasting Company"s Buckskin, Riverboat, and Peter Gunn, as well as the crime drama Sheriff of Cochise, and the aviation adventure series Sky King and Whirlybirds.
She also appeared in a 1956 episode of The Lone Ranger entitled "Cross of Santo Domingo". Rand Brooks guest stars in the episode as Tom Hickey.
That year she made three appearances on Perry Mason, most notably as Jean Strague in "The Case of the Buried Clock".
In 1960, she was cast as Mistress Grandsoir in the episode "Mistress Viner Vanishes" of the American Broadcasting Company/Warner Brothers crime drama Bourbon Street Beat, starring Andrew Duggan.
She is more remembered for having portrayed Nurse Wills on the American Broadcasting Company medical drama Ben Casey, from 1961 to 1966.
She appeared with John Payne in various roles in five episodes of his National Broadcasting Company western series The Restless Gun, and also guest starred as Mistress Wayne in the Rawhide episode "Incident of the Tinkers Dam".
Bates, who also taught acting, also appeared in films such as,, and David Lynch"s as Mistress X. Her last roles were small parts in,, and
She died of breast cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.
