
Elizabeth Harrower
Personal Info
Known for
Acting
Gender
Female
Birthday
1918-05-28
Day of Death
2003-12-10 (85 years old)
Place of Birth
Alameda, California, USA
Elizabeth Harrower
Biography
Betty Louise Foss was born during the final days of World War I in Alameda, California as the country plagued by a flu epidemic. Within six weeks, her mother died, her father had a nervous breakdown, and relatives passed her care around. As babies were thought to draw the deadly flu, Betty was eventually placed in a San Francisco orphanage where she was later adopted by Scottish immigrants William and Jessie Harrower and raised in Berkeley and Los Angeles. During the Great Depression her adoptive father's salary was cut in half and her adoptive mother decided to take Betty out of school and off to Hollywood to begin an acting career. After trying out several alter egos in the hopes of making an impression on someone in the industry, Betty Foss eventually settled on the identity of Elizabeth Harrower. Elizabeth Harrower appeared in "Becky Sharp (1935)", the first feature-length color film in 1935. She would continue to appear in hundreds of radio, television, film and stage productions over the next decades, most notably "True Grit (1969)". In 1942, Harrower married Harry Seabold, an Air Force cadet she had met in fifth grade. Their daughter, actress Susan Seaforth Hayes, was born in 1943. Her husband was called into war even before that and the marriage subsequently did not last. By the 1970s Elizabeth Harrower had met soap opera scribe William J. Bell and she would eventually start her writing career and became head writer of "Days of Our Lives (1965)" from 1979-1980. She went on to write for Bell's "The Young and the Restless (1973)" in the 1980s. Her last writing stint was on the short-lived soap opera "Generations (1989)" in 1991. In 2003, already while taking chemotherapy she had a prominent limited run as Charlotte Ramsey on "The Young and the Restless (1973)". She died shortly thereafter at age 85.
Acting
(1974)
I Love You...Good-bye
as Mrs. Freeman
(1973)
A Brand New Life
as Margaret Kalman
(1972)
The Adventures of Nick Carter
as Sister Effie
(1971)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
as Reporter at Hotel (uncredited)
(1971)
Vanishing Point
as Communications Officer
(1971)
Shoot Out
as Housekeeper
(1969)
True Grit
as Mrs. Ross
(1969)
The Sterile Cuckoo
as Landlady (uncredited)
(1966)
Batman
as Picnicking Woman (uncredited)
(1965)
Cat Ballou
as Townswoman (uncredited)
(1965)
Zebra in the Kitchen
as Town Gossip
(1962)
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
as French Prisoner (uncredited)
(1962)
House of Women
as Mrs. Potter
(1962)
The Wild Westerners
as Martha Bernard
(1962)
Don't Knock the Twist
as Ruth Emerson
(1959)
The FBI Story
as Clerk (uncredited)
(1958)
Marjorie Morningstar
as Miss Kimble (uncredited)
(1958)
Teacher's Pet
as Clara Dibney (uncredited)
(1958)
Going Steady
as Mrs. Armstrong
(1954)
Thunder Pass
as Mrs. Hemp
(1952)
Plymouth Adventure
as Elizabeth Hopkins
(1951)
(1949)
The Pilgrimage Play
as Woman of Samaria