Though she is probably best known to modern audiences as "Dobie Gillis' mother" from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, a popular TV show of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Florida Friebus (1909-1988) made her mark and found her first and most enduring love in the theater.
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. Florida Friebus began her professional career on Broadway in Triple Crossed at the age of 18, in 1927, after studying at New York's Theatre Guild School. After several more roles on Broadway and in summer stock at Stockbridge, Massachusetts' Berkshire Playhouse, Friebus fell in with Eva Le Gallienne's well-regarded Civic Repertory Company. This would prove to be her big break and the beginning of a sweet obsession.
Looking to impress the famed Ms. Le Gallienne, the teenaged Friebus presented her with an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland after hearing that Le Gallienne had long been interested in doing something of that sort. Le Gallienne responded enthusiastically, and in 1932 she and Friebus debuted the first Broadway production of Alice in Wonderland to critical praise. A number of years went by as Friebus honed her craft, working on Broadway, in summer stock, and on touring productions, including Pride and Prejudice (Music Box Theatre), The Primrose Path (Biltmore), and State of the Union (Hudson Theater). Alice called, though, and in 1947, Friebus and Le Gallienne teamed again in a critically lauded revival of Alice in Wonderland on Broadway at the American Repertory Theatre. The newer mediums of radio and television called as well, and Friebus appeared on a number of radio shows ( Texaco Star Theatre, etc.) and adapted her Alice script for TV in 1955. She worked extensively with the illustrious New Stages theater group beginning in the late 1940s as well.
Throughout the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, Friebus worked in theater and TV, appearing notably on stage in Absence of the Cello, Mornings at Seven, and Tea and Sympathy, and on TV in Dobie Gillis, Peyton Place, The Bob Newhart Show and the children's storytelling show Look and Listen . But Alice in Wonderland came calling again in 1982 and 1983 with, respectively, a stage adaptation starring Le Gallienne and Kate Burton and a TV adaptation with Kate Burton and her father, Richard Burton.
Friebus was socially and politically active throughout her life as well, holding several positions with Actors' Equity Association throughout the years, including chair of the committee opposing Senator Joseph McCarthy's blacklist of actors in the 1950s and as a councilor in advocating for actors' rights. She was involved with the Dramatists Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. She was married for nearly 20 years, from 1934 to 1952, to fellow actor Richard Waring, who, not surprisingly, appeared in a production of Alice in Wonderland (Broadway, 1947). Friebus died in 1988 in Laguna Niguel, California, where she had resided for a number of years.
From the guide to the Florida Friebus papers, 1926-1988, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)
