There is certainly nothing new about an actor or actress becoming so identified with a character they play on TV that the audience confuses one for the other. For years, whenever Elizabeth Montgomery showed up on TV somewhere, the first response was frequently, “It’s Bewitched!” Do you really think Leonard Nimoy could go anywhere without people commenting on the fact that they were with Star Trek’s Mr. Spock? And then there’s actress Frances Bavier who had been acting on stage, film and TV for 40 years before playing Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show, yet that was the way people thought of her for the rest of her life. And it was so serious that she even saw a psychiatrist about it.
“You can’t be an actress for 40 years, living in a world of make-believe, and not be affected,” she related to the Star-Gazette of Elmira, New York, in 1966. “Sooner or later, your mind begins to click and in my case you are wise to seek professional help to help stop being Aunt Bee after work. It’s terribly difficult, because Aunt Bee is so much nicer than the real me. Unlike plays in which you play a character only a couple of hours each night, you must be a television character 12 hours a day. And even when you go home, people don’t recognize you as you, but for the character you play. It can be awfully confusing.”
She added to The Charlotte News of Charlotte, North Carolina, “Once in a while I get a hankering to play a really bad woman. Once a few years ago I was really vicious in a Lone Ranger episode, but so many people wrote in outrage at what I was doing, I guess it was a mistake. Sometimes it gets me down to think I’ve lost my own identity and my identity as an actress. But other times I get a lift when I realize that I’m really doing quite well.”
For much more on Frances Bavier and The Andy Griffith Show, please scroll down.
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CBS Television Distribution
Early Days
She was born Frances Elizabeth Bavier on December 14, 1902, in New York City. Her original intention was to become a teacher, which is what she went to Columbia University for, though it didn’t work out. “I was bad there,” she admitted to The Charlotte News. “Very bad. Actually, I was terrified. That’s probably the reason I enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.”
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Playbill
Her First Job
“I must be a rare species,” she reflected with The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1943. “Every time I’ve been an understudy, I’ve gone on. In my first job in the theater, a vaudeville skit with William Cameron, the ingénue suddenly revealed that she was about to have a baby. The doctor ordered her to quit work and it was I, the understudy, who gave thanks for that ‘act of God.’ As understudy in Higher and Higher, I replaced Hilda Spong in Boston before the New York opening and when I followed Dorothy Stickney in On Borrowed Time, I not only completed the Broadway run, but I also played the part in Chicago.”
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Playbill
The Cost of Stardom
And while she rose to the occasion each time, she did explain that there is a physical toll. “When you are told by the stage manager that you must go on,” detailed Frances, “it is actually a physical shock requiring every bit of reserve energy. Usually, you get word just before the curtain and your wits have to work, not double, but triple time. The ordeal is terrific since you must make good in one performance and it’s got to be your best. Nevertheless, it is very fine training.”
Her stage credits include Black Pit (1935), Mother (1935), Bitter Stream (1936), Marching Song (1937), Native Son (1942), Kiss and Tell (1943), Little A (1947), Jenny Kissed Me (1948) and Point of No Return (1951).
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CBS Television Distribution
Marriage History
There are conflicting reports on whether or not Frances was married during the early years of her career. Some have said that she was married to Russell Carpenter, member of the military, from 1928 until they divorced in 1933, while other sources claim she was never wed to anyone. However, in a 1964 interview with the Star-Gazette of Elmira, New York, she did reflect, “I married a man who was charming in every way, except that, being non-professional, he had little patience with my dedication to acting. I wanted to be both wife and actress, but learned quickly that this is impossible, at least in my specific case. To paraphrase Shakespeare, it was not that I loved him less, but I loved acting more. I know that many psychologists, particularly women psychologists, hold that a woman can have both a home and a career. But that is generally not the husband’s point of view and I sympathize entirely with the man who wants his wife to be completely devoted to him and their children.”
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20th Century Fox
Getting Candid
“For a woman, marriage should proudly be considered a full-time career in itself,” she elaborated, “except in extraordinary cases where a woman is lucky enough to have writing talent that she can exercise within the confines of her home or an outside job that’s just part-time, something to keep her from being bored. And I have nothing but admiration for women who are forced by economic circumstance to accept outside employment while maintaining a home. I speak only of career women, like myself, who delude themselves that they can make a husband happy even though he’s shaded in a dark corner while she basks in the spotlight. Actresses, either dedicated or successful because of their glamour, make very poor wives. The divorce record speaks tor itself and it’s an exceptional woman who can make a peak success of both marriage and a career in the theater.”
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Paramount Pictures
Her Resume
As far as the big screen is concerned, Frances had an uncredited role in the film Girls About Town (1931), but then was recognized for roles in O, My Darling Clementine (1943), the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still and Jerry Lewis’ The Stooge (both 1961), The Lady Says No, Bend of the River, Sally and Saint Anne, My Wife’s Best Friend and Horizons West (all 1952), Man in the Attic (1953), The Bad Seed (1956), A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed (1958) and It Started With a Kiss (1959).
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NBCUniversal
Finding Her Place
Like many actors, she quickly found a place in television, starring in a 1952 episode of Racket Squad. Some anthologies followed as well as shows like Dragnet and The Lone Ranger. Then she scored a regular role in the 1954 to 1956 series It’s a Great Life, playing a character named Mrs. Amy Morgan. The show stars James Dunn, William Bishop and Michael O’Shea as renters in a boarding house run by Frances’ character. In many ways — as was actually the case with the vast majority of her film and television roles — she offered up variations of what would be her portrayal of Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show beginning in 1960.
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CBS Television Distribution
Iconic Character
There is no question that the Aunt Bee character endeared herself to the television audience and as far as the viewers were concerned, there was no difference between Frances and Bee. Behind-the-scenes that wasn’t necessarily the case. In the pages of The Andy Griffith Show Book, producer Sheldon Leonard commented, “[She] was a rather remote lady. Highly professional and a fine comedienne, fine actress with very individual character. She was rather self-contained and wa not part of the general hi-jinks that centered upon Andy on the set.”
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CBS Television Distribution
On Set
Added producer Richard Linke, “She was very touchy and moody due to her age, and you had to be very careful how you treated her and what you said around her. I think Andy offended her a few times, but they became very close friends.”
“I think Frances thought I was a gentleman,” mused actor Jack Dodson, who played Howard Sprague on the show. “I’m not, really, not any more so than anybody else. Since I had fewer scenes to do with her, I had fewer opportunities to swear in front of her, which is why we never had any difficulties. Frances was temperamental and moody, but she kept 99 percent of that to herself. Once in a while, she would get mad at someone. She was the only person in the whole company whose feelings you had to be careful not to hurt.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Full of Talent
Pop culture historian Geoffrey Mark, author of The Lucy Book and Ella: A Biography of the Legendary Ella Fitzgerald, opines, “She was a very talented lady, but she was very difficult to work with and nobody could really figure it out. Eve Arden had trouble with her on The Eve Arden Show. That’s the earliest I can point to where Frances was already getting to be persnickety. I can only repeat what I was told, but on The Andy Griffith Show, Howard Morris, who played Ernest T. Bass on the show and directed episodes of it, said that directing Frances was like stepping on a landmine. If you would ask her to move three inches to the right to get in the proper frame, or, ‘Could you stand up when you say that line?’, she’d blow a fuse and refuse. It was, like, ‘I’m an actress and I know what I’m doing. How dare you try to tell me when to walk and where?’ It’s like yes, you are an actress, but an actress takes direction from the director. Why in the world would you make what is already a stressful situation more stressful?”
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CBS Television Distribution
First Impression
Part of the problem actually may have come from Frances having a different impression of what the show would be from the very beginning. “In the first episode,” says Geoffrey, “they tell you how things came to be and much of it centered on Frances’ character. That was the main thrust of the episode, but she wasn’t the main thrust of the show. There are many episodes where she actually has very little to do; they’re not centered around her. When Don Knotts left the show and it went to color, the whole mood of the show changed. Andy was more or less a straight man to the other characters, so one week it was about Aunt Bee, another was about Opie and so on, and it would be less and less about Andy. So Frances began to get larger and larger parts of the last three seasons, which she enjoyed. She liked to be the center of attention, but when she wasn’t, she didn’t like it. She and Andy Griffith did not get along at all. She was practically rude to him.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Wanderlust
In interviews at the time, one got the sense that despite the success she was having as a part of the show, Frances wasn’t really getting joy out of it. Then again, that sense of perhaps being “trapped” was there for a long time. In a 1956 interview with The San Bernardino County Sun the reporter observed, “One would hardly suspect that in Frances Bavier, who epitomizes the classic homebody type both off stage and on, there lurks the soul of an adventuress. She says her favorite hobby is launching imaginary expeditions to remote corners of the world via her fabulous collection of maps. ‘I’m not a youngster anymore, but I’ve got the wanderlust of a teenage sailor.’”
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CBS Television Distribution
Feeling Lonely
In 1961, while The Andy Griffith Show was in its second season, she told The Charlotte News of living in California, “Whenever I feel lonely out here, I just go out shopping in a supermarket. Somebody will always look at me, smile and say, ‘Why hello, you’re Aunt Bee.’ I never lost my homesickness for New York and the stage. It’s different out there and it’s lonely here. In the theater, you make friends and you spend time together when you aren’t working. But here, no matter how long you work together, when work is over everyone says so long and disappears. You never see them again until you start work again.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Her Personal Life
Five years later, talking to The Times Record of Troy, New York, she commented, “I don’t have a lot of friends. I don’t see how anyone my age working as hard as I do can have a big social life. I get very annoyed with people and the older I get, the crankier I am. This work has had an effect on my personality. I’m impatient with people and oriented to action.”
Points out Geoffrey, “Frances spent a lot of the 1950s on sitcoms playing the same sort of matronly character: ‘I’m doing the cooking and I’m taking care of the house so that the main characters can do their thing.’ She was definitely typecast and I have heard she was not happy about that.”
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CBS Television Distribution
End of the Show
The Andy Griffith Show ended its run in 1968 after producing 175 episodes. The series concluded because Andy was looking to do something different, but the network was still interested in Mayberry and the decision was made to create a spin-off title in the form of Mayberry RFD. The focus would shift from the Taylors to widower farmer (eventually head of the town council) Sam Jones, raising his son, Mike, and they were surrounded by all the regular supporting characters of Mayberry — including Aunt Bee. Amazingly it worked, much of it because of actor Ken Berry, who stepped in as Sam.
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CBS Television Distribution
Creating Her Legacy
As to how Aunt Bee remained a part of the mix, Frances explained to the Oakland Tribune, “Bob Ross, the producer, said to me, ‘You’re the backbone of the show.’ It was flattery that convinced me to continue. I get more money, too, but the flattering did it. And I wouldn’t have to touch wardrobe; it would all be picked for me. Then Ken Berry himself came to me and said, ‘Oh, please stay.’ I’ve been acting 45 years and it’s a hard habit to break.” She stayed with the show for two of its three seasons, being replaced by Alice Ghostly in the show’s last year.
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CBS Television Distribution
Supporting Player
Elaborates Geoffrey, “After The Andy Griffith Show ended, they spun off Mayberry RFD and they sent Frances along with some of the supporting player to give the show continuity. She only lasted two more seasons, her part getting smaller and smaller. And when she left, Frances did what? She retired to Siler City, North Carolina, the closest thing to Mayberry you could find in a real town. What’s interesting is that after she retired, she sent Andy a letter apologizing for the way she treated him for eight seasons.”
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Nbc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock
Leaving TV
Outside of 1974’s Benji, in which she played yet another variation of Aunt Bee, she never performed again. She was offered the opportunity to reprise the character on the 1986 TV movie Return to Mayberry, but turned the offer down. As Andy Griffith explained to The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, “Frances wanted to do the movie, but she told me she simply didn’t want anyone to see how sick she was. She lives by herself, rarely talks to anyone and hopes people will remember Aunt Bee the way she was.”
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Silercity.org
A New Life
In a local TV interview, Frances described what life in Siler City was like and that the locals likely saw her as “a 70-year-old lady that probably wants to be alone and they’re having a problem with trying to be friendly and show their friendliness, and at the same time not intrude. That makes it very difficult for them. Living here has been a difficult adjustment for me. I have a great deal to learn from Siler City and North Carolina. It’s an entirely different and new way of life.”
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MeTV
Starting New
YouTube user LandumC Goes There, whose focus in hundreds of videos is on classic celebrities, filming locations, cold case files and more, offers up a profile of Frances and what her life in Siler City was like. “She moved to Siler City in the hopes of discovering a small town goodness that she herself had become the person to represent that in the mind of middle America,” he says. “Naturally she was warmly received by the county of Chatham and it’s 3,700 residents in the town of Siler City. These plain folks gave her a role to play there. As soon as she arrived, she was made Grand Marshall in a number of parades, she was honored at different civic functions and she was often seen driving her Studebaker around the town.”
It was reported that she was, at least at first, an enthusiastic part of Christmas and Easter Seal Societies, working for them from her home, and writing letters of inspiration to fans who would reach out to her.
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Mulberry Square Releasing
Life Away From Mayberry
But, LandumC notes, it wasn’t long before she began to realize that Mayberry didn’t quite exist in the way she thought it would, and her existence became something of an episode of The Twilight Zone. “She had people gawking at her house and peeking through the window,” he explains. “She couldn’t go out to dinner or to the grocery store without being constantly harassed in her mind by adoring fans. People were constantly making jokes relating to Aunt Bee and she actually didn’t have her own personality anymore. She lived through everybody’s eyes of seeing her as Aunt Bee. This continued and it just wore Frances down. Her only solace was her house and to retreat into there and have everything delivered to her. It’s a small wonder then, by the ’80s, the former television star was living out of her back bedroom. Her curtains were pulled tight and she lived there with her 14 cats.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Final Days
On December 4, 1989, Frances passed away from a combination of issues, including congestive heart failure, myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease, breast cancer, arthritis and COPD. She did, of course, leave behind a wonderful legacy and a character who continues to touch the hearts of generations of television viewers. And while she pushed back against being so identified with Aunt Bee, there’s something fitting about part of the inscription on her headstone: “To live in the hearts of those left behind is not to die.”
