The Barbara Bates Centennial

August 6 was the birthday of Andy Warhol, Lucille Ball,Paul Bartel, Leo Carrillo, Louella Parsons,Robert Mitchum, Hoot Gibson, Hannah Chaplin (Charlie’s mother), Bunny Breckenridge, William B. Williams, giantess Anna Swan, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, et al, but having written some already about them (at the links) we pause to remember the centennial anniversary of the birth of ill-fated actress Barbara Bates (1925-1969).

First a little primer on who she was. Bates had a minor footprint in classic comedy: she’s Danny Kaye’s love interest in The Inspector General (1949) and Dean Martin‘s in The Caddy (1953). She was Charlie Chaplin‘s first choice for the Claire Bloom role in Limelight (1952), but couldn’t get out of her existing contract; she was also in a tv commercial with Buster Keaton. She was one of the older kids in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1952). Many remember her for her small but significant role in All About Eve (1950), as the girl who is plainly going to do to Anne Baxter what Baxter did to Bette Davis. Bates was also a regular on the tv sit-com It’s a Great Life (1954-55) with Frances Bavier, Michael O’Shea, and James Dunn. She also appeared in some Hal Roach streamliners early in her career and was close friends with Lois Laurel, Stan Laurel‘s daughter.

Non-comedies Bates had key roles in included the noir classic Quicksand (1950), the 1952 remake of The Outcasts of Poker Flats, and Apache Territory (1958) with Rory Calhoun.

If you’re sharp you’ll have noted that all of those credits were accrued within the span of a single decade. Bates experience in Hollywood seems to have consisted of few skittles and less beer. She reminds me a bit of Louise Brooks. Basically, she was a gorgeous and sensitive teenager from the middle of the country (Denver) whose looks and abilities (she’d studied ballet) very rapidly took her close to the top. Having attained that, possibly without really meaning to, she was kind of like the dog who caught the car. Google her and check out the photos. She really was striking in a way not dissimilar from the likes of Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, and others. This was combined with a sort of wholesome quality not unlike that of Teresa Wright. She’d begun modeling as a teenager, and wound up in magazines like Yank and Life. She also won beauty pageants. The first prize in one of them was a ticket to Hollywood. While there she met Cecil Coan, a publicist for United Artists who had repped Mary Pickford, who became her manager and publicist, leaving his wife and kids to do so. Bates was all of 19 when she stepped into this very grown-up situation. Lois Laurel described Coan as a Svengali-type, who was very demanding.

Bates’ very first screen role was as a dancing girl in Salome, Where She Danced (1945) starring Yvonne De Carlo. For a couple of years there were bit parts in forgotten films, until gradually, it was stuff like April Showers, Johnny Belinda, and June Bride, all in 1948.

Bates was temperamental on set, and was given to emotional episodes. I’m reluctant to chalk it up to mental illness, as the life she was in was beset with so many unnatural pressures and demands. She was said to have been painfully shy in the beginning. She balked at a lot of what she was expected to do, and is described as “moody”, “depressed”, “insecure”, and so forth. In 1949 she was fired from Warner Brothers when she refused to travel to New York on a publicity junket. Fortunately, 20th Century Fox hired her right away. She was fired from It’s a Great Life on account of her behavior. Now that she was 30, it was tougher to rebound at the stage. Coan got her a contract with the Rank Organization and she made two films in England, House of Secrets (1956) and Town on Trial (1957). She was dropped from two subsequent films due to her behavior, and then dropped entirely. Her last acting credit was an episode of The Saint, which aired in 1962. Bates and Coan returned to Hollywood.

Meantime, there was ill luck that was not of Bates making. The couple lost money to bad investments. In 1960, Coan was diagnosed with cancer. Bates packed in her career in order to be his care-giver. A few months later she slashed her wrists but was saved and hospitalized. She continued to take care of Coan, though she lived apart from him.

In 1967, Coan died. Bates returned to Denver, where she lived with her mother, worked as a nurse’s aid, and attended secretarial school. In late 1968 she married local sportscaster William Reed, whom she’d known since they were kids. This seeming bid for stability and relative local prominence was short-lived. Four months later, in March 1969, her mother found her dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage. She was only 43 years old.