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,:267 and as Mrs. Lillian Bakerman on The Bob Newhart Show. 2Early 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. Friebus was known to make it clear to curious people that she was named after her mother's favorite aunt — not after the state of Florida. 2Personal life Friebus married actor Richard Waring, in 1934. The couple divorced in 1952. Friebus never remarried. 2Career Friebus first acted professionally in 1929 in New York City, appearing in The Cradle Song with the Civic Repertory Theater. She appeared on television in such programs as The Joseph Cotten Show, The Ford Theatre Hour, Perry Mason, Bachelor Father, Father Knows Best, The Rookies, 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 Rhod