Bates was born in Chicago in 1882 to Granville Bates, Sr., a developer and builder,^[1] and Adaline Bates (née Gleason). He grew up in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago on the southeast corner of Evanston (now Broadway) Ave. and Oakdale Ave.^[2] in a townhouse that his father later demolished, along with all of the others on the block, to redevelop as a four-story commercial building with apartments above.^[3]

Bates began his film career in the 1910s with Essanay Studios of the Chicago film industry,^[4] and his World War I draft Registration Card listed him as a travelling actor for Francis Owen & Co. He appeared on Broadway in the late 1920s and early 1930s, notably in the original production of Merrily We Roll Along (1934) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.^[5] He was also the Conductor in the original production of Twentieth Century (1932).^[6]

From the 1930s, he appeared in a number of classic films, although sometimes uncredited. He received favorable notice for his character roles, such as in My Favorite Wife (1940), where he played an irascible judge - The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote "Mr. Bates deserves a separate mention for his masterpiece of comic creation."^[7] Another New York Times reviewer noted that "Edward Ellis and Granville Bates provoked an early audience yesterday to gentle laughter in a brief but quietly amusing sequence" in Chatterbox (1936),^[8] while Crowther praised his work in Men Against the Sky (1940): "The players' performances are stock and pedestrian, excepting that of Granville Bates as a cynical banker".^[9]

Bates died of a heart attack in Hollywood on July 9, 1940.^[10] He was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.^[11]

• Granville Bates at IMDb
• Granville Bates at the Internet Broadway Database