She built a steady career of Everywoman roles. Perhaps none of them made a bigger impression than her performance as “Clocktower Lady.”
Elsa Raven, a character actress perhaps best remembered for a small but crucial role in the hit 1985 time-travel comedy “Back to the Future,” in which she establishes a pivotal plot point by lobbying to preserve the local clock tower, died on Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91. Her agent, David Shaul of the BRS/Gage talent agency, confirmed her death. Ms. Raven had dozens of film and television credits and appeared on New York and regional stages. She built a steady career of Everywoman roles. The film and television characters she played sometimes didn’t even have names; she was just “Maid” or “Prenatal Nurse” or “Mom” (as in the Season 6 “Seinfeld” episode “The Mom and Pop Store”). Perhaps none of those performances made a bigger impression than her role as “Clocktower Lady” in “Back to the Future,” the top-grossing movie of 1985. Early in the film her character interrupts the young lovers played by Michael J. Fox and Claudia Wells in mid-kiss, urging them to “save the clock tower.” The mayor, she tells them, holding out a donation can, wants to replace the clock.
