Actress Polly Holliday, who played the wisecracking waitress Flo of “Kiss my grits” fame in the 1970s-80s sitcom “Alice,” has died.
She was 88.
Holliday died at home in Manhattan on Tuesday, her longtime friend and manager Dennis Aspland told The New York Times, without divulging a cause.
“Alice” centered around a widowed waitress (Linda Lavin) trying to make it as a singer. Together with the sharp-tongued Flo and ditzy Vera (Beth Howland), the three characters served a host of regular customers who brought eccentricities of their own. The show was loosely based on Martin Scorsese’s 1974 movie “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”
A native of Jasper, Alabama, Holliday built her singular character around a compilation of all the “Flos” she had encountered at truck stops during a childhood spent accompanying her truck driver father around the country. What emerged was a brassy, sassy, sharp-tongued but warmhearted woman whom Holliday said she related to but didn’t resemble.
In high dudgeon, Florence Jean Castleberry would lob her shrill, signature catchphrase at anyone giving off the slightest hint of attitude, while doing little to curb her own. The oft-shrieked slogan frequently landed on her diner-owner boss, Mel Sharples (Vic Tayback).
As a supporting actress in the series, Holliday was nominated for three Emmys and won two Golden Globes. Nonetheless, after 90 episodes, she peeled off from “Alice” in 1980 to launch her own spinoff, “Flo.” That portrayal got her nominated for a fourth Emmy, though the series lasted just one season.
Holliday turned back to the stage, where she had started. She appeared in numerous plays on and off Broadway and was nominated for a Tony in 1990 as Big Mama in a “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” revival.
The versatile performer did not fully abandon the world of screens, continuing to appear in movies and on television. She broke out of Flo’s character mold to play the doomed wicked widow Ruby Deagle in “Gremlins” and an icy, reporter-blocking receptionist in “All the President’s Men.” Holliday could also be spotted in “The Parent Trap,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and a slew of other films.
On the small screen Holliday had a recurring role on “Home Improvement” and cropped up in “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “The Golden Girls,” “The Equalizer” and many more.
Holliday had been the final surviving “Alice” cast member after Lavin’s death last December. Preceding them were Tayback in 1990, Howland in 2016 and Philip McKeon, who played Alice’s son as a child actor, in 2019.
Holliday reportedly had no immediate survivors.
With News Wire Services
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