She played Bela Lugosi's first victim in The Return of the Vampire (1943), Anne Winson in The Soul of a Monster (1944), Victoria in The Mask of Diijon (1946),[2] Diana Palmer in The Phantom serial (1943),[2] Agnes in Back from the Dead (film) (1957), and she also had a minor role in Death of a Salesman (1951).

In 1960, she was cast as Mrs. Grandsoir in the episode "Mrs. Viner Vanishes" of the ABC/Warner Brothers crime drama Bourbon Street Beat, starring Andrew Duggan.

Bates, who also taught acting, also appeared in films such as The Strangler (1964), Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1970), and David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) as Mrs.

Bates was a practicing Episcopalian and she was a registered Republican who supported the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

[6] In 2007, Bates died of breast cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California at age 89.