Florida Friebus

Florida Friebus (October 10, 1909 – May 27, 1988) was an American writer and actress of stage, film, and television. Friebus's best-known roles were Winifred "Winnie" Gillis, the sympathetic mother of Dwayne Hickman's character Dobie Gillis on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and as Mrs. Lillian Bakerman on The Bob Newhart Show.

Early years

Born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, Friebus hailed from an East Coast theatrical family that included her father, Theodore Friebus, a leading stage actor with Boston's Castle Square Players in the early 1900s and a minor silent-film actor, and her maternal grandmother, Georgine Flagg, who scandalized her own family in the late 19th century by venturing onstage as a player with Augustin Daly's stock company in Manhattan. She married actor Richard Waring, in 1934. The couple divorced in 1952. Friebus never remarried.^[1]

Career

She appeared on television in such programs as The Joseph Cotten Show, The Ford Theatre Hour, Perry Mason, Bachelor Father, Father Knows Best, Peyton Place, Ironside, Gunsmoke, Sanford and Son, Ben Casey, The Doris Day Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Room 222, The Partridge Family, Chico and the Man, Barnaby Jones, Alice and Rhoda.^[2]

Death

Friebus died of cancer in 1988 in Laguna Niguel, California, aged 78.^[2]

Filmography

References

External links

• Florida Friebus at the Internet Broadway Database
• Florida Friebus at Find a Grave