She seems to have been the only person who ever failed to get along with Andy Griffith. She did apologize to him, a few months before her death, but whereas he remained friends with people he’d worked with since the ‘50s or earlier, he also said that there was just something about him that she didn’t like. She admitted to being “difficult,” which he was impressed by, but it seems people were walking on eggshells around her. Ron Howard said he was pretty sure she didn’t like being around kids, but she doesn’t seem to have liked being around much of anyone. She liked Studebakers and cats and lived as a recluse in her final years.
Which makes it a bit alarming that she’s one of those people who got into the film industry despite setting out to be a teacher; one wonders what kind of teacher she would’ve made. She started in vaudeville, another thing common to a great many performers, particularly of her generation, and made her way to Broadway. She wasn’t a huge star there, it seems, but she did attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and appear in a play with Henry Fonda, and that’s more of a career that quite a lot of other actors ever had.
I don’t know why the Disney studios hired her for the live-action reference footage for Sleeping Beauty, and I don’t know why she didn’t voice one of the Fairy Godmothers in the movie. I’ve seen the footage; it’s less strange than a lot of the rest of the live-action reference footage for Sleeping Beauty, admittedly not the highest of bars. Still, at that time, I’m sure Bavier was glad for the work; she had the kind of career at that point where you probably recognized her from something but weren’t hugely likely to be sure where you recognized her from. Perry Mason, I guess.
And then, the year after Sleeping Beauty came out, she was hired for The Andy Griffith Show, and no other performer stayed in Mayberry as long as she did. Despite apparently resenting how little she was given to do despite her New York credentials (she was actually born there) and clearly being a royal pain to get along with, she even stuck around for Mayberry, RFD. Maybe she just liked the steady work; on the other hand, she was closing on sixty when the show started and reasonably could have retired by the time it ended. After eight years of just The Andy Griffith Show, surely she’d earned enough to go to her house in North Carolina, in the small town she’d fallen in love with.
She did retire there afterward; her final credit is “Lady With the Cat” from 1974’s Benjy, and she lived until 1989. Alone. There are claims she was married, but no evidence, and she had no children. She had fourteen cats. She lived quietly, seldom seeing anyone, until her heart gave out. Her house and final Studebaker were left in extremely poor shape. Her tombstone refers to her as having played Aunt Bee (I’ve seen it spelled “Bee” and “Bea,” but her tombstone says “Bee”) and says that, so long as people remember her, she will never die. All things considered, that will be quite a long life.