Gwendolyn Pates

Gwendolyn Pates (April 4, 1891 – November 1970), also billed as Gwendoline Pates, was an American actress who worked in silent films, vaudeville, stock theater, and on Broadway. Born Gwendoline Ivore Pates in Dallas, Texas, she was the daughter of Frederick B. Pates, a voice teacher, and Allie Beckwith Pates. She spent part of her youth in Alton, Illinois, and she and her sister Vivian, who also became an actress, trained at the Boyd Theater School of Acting in Omaha.

Pates appeared in more than forty short silent films between 1911 and 1915, frequently in title roles. Among her credits were His Date with Gwendoline (1913), The Blind Girl of Castle Guille (1913), and When Romance Came to Anne (1914). In 1912 she appeared alongside George W. Beatty, the chief test pilot and instructor at the United States Army Aviation School, in An Aeroplane Love Affair. In For Mayor – Bess Smith (1913), she played a woman seeking political office who ultimately accepts her opponent's marriage proposal.

Following her film work, Pates transitioned to vaudeville and stock theater. By 1914 she had married actor and playwright William A. Grew, and together they operated the Grew-Pates Players, a stock company that performed in Boston and elsewhere in 1914 and 1915. The company's productions included The Gates of America, Electrocuted at 5 A.M., Tess of the Storm Country, The Lure of the City, The End of the Trail, After Five, The Prince Chap, and a stage adaptation of The Perils of Pauline. The Grew-Pates Players were based in Canada in 1918 and 1920. In 1917, Pates headlined The Heart of Wetona in New York and on tour.

In 1927, Pates appeared on Broadway in the original cast of The Mating Season, a farce written by her husband, who also performed in the production. Pates and Grew divorced after 1927. She died in New York in November 1970 at the age of 79.