Bess Flowers

Biography

Bess Flowers (born November 23, 1898, in Sherman, Texas; died July 28, 1984, in Woodland Hills, California) was an American actress best known for her work as an extra in hundreds of films. She was known as “The Queen of the Hollywood Extras.” Over a career of roughly forty-one years, she appeared in more than 350 feature films, along with many comedy shorts. Her significance lies in what her career shows about the working life of background performers in the studio era. Her faces filled parties, courtrooms, restaurants and nightclubs in dozens of famous productions, and her record of appearances in Academy Award contenders makes her a useful reference for anyone who follows the history of the Oscars.

Flowers was born in Sherman, Texas, and made her film debut in 1923 with Hollywood. She made two more films that same year, and from then on her work came steadily. Most of her appearances were uncredited, since she generally played non-speaking parts: a guest at a party, a spectator in a theatre, an office worker in the background, or a customer in a bar. This was a common way to work under the studio system, and it meant that audiences came to recognize her face long before they knew her name.

By the 1930s she was in constant demand and turned up across very different genres. She worked in thrillers for Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, but she also appeared in comedies with Charley Chase, the Three Stooges, Leon Errol, Edgar Kennedy and Laurel and Hardy. That range explains how she could move easily from a screwball comedy to a courtroom drama. In It Happened One Night (1934), she plays Agnes, a secretary, and in Vertigo (1958) she is a diner at Ernie's. In both cases she fits into the scene without drawing attention away from the leads, which is exactly the skill that kept extras in demand.

Her name is closely tied to the lists of Best Picture contenders. She appeared, without credit, in eight films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture, among them It Happened One Night, Gone with the Wind and Around the World in 80 Days. In total she appeared in twenty-three Best Picture nominees, a record for that category. She shares the record for the winning films with the character actor Franklyn Farnum, and the two appeared together in All About Eve, The Greatest Show on Earth and Around the World in 80 Days. These credits show how far background performers moved through the same prestige productions as the stars.

Her career was not confined to the big screen. She also appeared in many American television series, including I Love Lucy, where she is usually seen as a theatre patron in episodes such as “Lucy Is Enceinte” (1952), “Ethel's Birthday” (1955) and “Lucy's Night in Town” (1957). Her work off camera also mattered to her profession. In 1945 she helped found the Screen Extras Guild, which operated from 1946 to 1992 before merging with the Screen Actors Guild. She served as one of its first vice-presidents and as recording secretary, roles that reflect her commitment to the conditions of workers who spent their days in the background.

Her personal life was also part of the record. She first married on September 2, 1923, in Ventura County, California, to Cullen Tate, an assistant director for Cecil B. DeMille. The couple had a daughter and divorced in Los Angeles in 1928. Her last film was Good Neighbor Sam (1964). She died at the age of 85 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills.

Today Bess Flowers is remembered as one of the most constant presences of classic Hollywood. Her legacy rests less on leading roles than on the sheer number of scenes she helped populate, and on her part in organizing the extras who made those scenes possible. For the film enthusiast, her appearances offer a lesson in how a studio built the sense of a living world: characters who barely speak, yet make a ballroom, a theatre or a courtroom feel real.

Key films

• It Happened One Night (1934): she plays Agnes, Gordon's secretary, in an uncredited role within the romantic comedy that won Best Picture.
• All About Eve (1950): she appears as one of the well-wishers at the awards event, a brief moment in the backstage drama.
• Rear Window (1954): she is a party guest with a poodle, one of the figures the protagonist watches from his window.
• Singin' in the Rain (1952): she is among the audience members in the musical, a discreet presence that helps fill out the show-within-a-film.
• Vertigo (1958): she plays a diner at Ernie's, in a scene that gives Hitchcock's story an urban setting.