Frances Evelyn Bay

 Frances Evelyn Bay (January 23, 1919 – September 15, 2011)

Bay started her career in the 1930s as a radio actress. Before World War II she acted professionally in Winnipeg and spent the war hosting the Canadian Broadcasting Company's radio show, Everybody's Program, aimed at service members overseas. She later married Charles Bay, had one son, and took a break from acting. Bay returned to acting in the 1970s, appearing in television and film roles, beginning with a small part in Foul Play, a 1978 comedy starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. A year earlier, she appeared as Mrs. Hamilton in the Christmas television special Christmastime with Mister Rogers. Bay's first major television appearance occurred playing the grandmother to the character of Fonzie on Happy Days. Bay's feature film work includes small roles in films like The Karate Kid (1984), Movers & Shakers (1985), Big Top Pee-wee (1988), Twins (1988), The Grifters (1990), The Pit and the Pendulum (1991). In 1994, she played Mrs. Pickman in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. In 1996, she played Adam Sandler's grandmother in the feature film Happy Gilmore. In 1999, she played Thelma, the head security guard at the Bradford robotics laboratory in the film Inspector Gadget. Bay's other roles included a supporting role in "The Rye", a notable 1996 episode of Seinfeld in which she played a woman who got into a physical altercation with Jerry over a loaf of marble rye bread. In 2002, Bay was involved in an auto accident in Glendale, California, which required her to have her leg amputated below the knee. Bay died in Tarzana, California on September 15, 2011, of complications from pneumonia at the age of 92. She is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles.