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 days, her mother Catherine Foss died, and her father Harry Foss had a nervous breakdown. The relatives passed Betty’s 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.
Betty’s parents decided to move 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. Harrower went on to find success in television, including four appearances on Perry Mason (The Case of the Waylaid Wolf, The Case of the Lurid Letter), and 10 appearances on Dennis the Menace (mostly as Dennis’ teacher, Miss Perkins) in the early 1960s. Elizabeth Harrower appeared in Becky Sharp (1935), the first feature-length color film in 1935.
In 1942, Harrower married Harry Seabold, an Air Force cadet she had met in fifth grade.
They had a daughter, Susan, who was born in 1943. Even before her husband was called into the war the marriage was failing and ended in divorce. For many years, she and her daughter lived in the Alvarado Terrace Historic District of Los Angeles, where she was active with the Pico-Union community redevelopment project advisory committee.
Elizabeth would continue to appear in hundreds of radio, television, film and stage productions over the next 5 decades, most notably True Grit(1969). By the 1970s Elizabeth Harrower had met soap opera scribe William J. Bell and she would then start her writing career. Eventually becoming the head writer of Days of Our Lives (1965) from 1979-1980.
She went on to write for The Young and the Restless (1973) in the 1980s. Her last writing stint was on the short-lived soap opera Generations (1989) in 1991. Elizabeth was nominated 4 times for a daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series but never won. In 2003, while already 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 of cancer at her home in Valley Village, Los Angeles. They interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Partial filmography[edit]
- The Pilgrimage Play (1949) – Woman of Samaria
- Plymouth Adventure (1952) – Elizabeth Hopkins (uncredited)
- Thunder Pass (1954) – Mrs. Hemp
- Teacher’s Pet (1958) – Clara Dibney (uncredited)
- Marjorie Morningstar (1958) – Miss Kimble (uncredited)
- Al Capone (1959) – Proprietress (uncredited)
- The FBI Story (1959) – Clerk (uncredited)
- I Passed for White (1960) – Undetermined Secondary Role (uncredited)
- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) – French Prisoner (uncredited)
- House of Women (1962) – Mrs. Potter (uncredited)
- Don’t Knock the Twist (1962) – Ruth Emerson
- The Wild Westerners (1962) – Martha Bernard
- Zebra in the Kitchen (1965) – Town Gossip (uncredited)
- Cat Ballou (1965) – Minor Role (uncredited)
- Batman (1966) – Picnicking Woman (uncredited)
- True Grit (1969) – Mrs. Ross
- The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) – Landlady (uncredited)
- Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) – Reporter at Hotel (uncredited)
- Shoot Out (1971) – Housekeeper (uncredited)
- I Love You… Good-bye (1974) – Mrs. Freeman