NEW YORK (AP) — Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actress who became a working class icon as a paper-hat wearing waitress on the TV sitcom “Alice,†has died. She was 87.
Lavin died in Los Angeles on Sunday of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her representative, Bill Veloric, told The Associated Press in an email.
A success on Broadway, Lavin tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,†the Martin Scorsese-directed film that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for playing the title waitress.
The title was shortened to “Alice†and Lavin become a role model for working moms as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son working in a roadside diner outside Phoenix. The show, with Lavin singing the theme song "There's a New Girl in Town," ran from 1976 to 1985.
The show turned “Kiss my grits†into a catchphrase and co-starred Polly Holliday as waitress Flo and Vic Tayback as the gruff owner and head chef of Mel’s Diner.
The series bounced around the CBS schedule during its first two seasons but became a hit leading into “All in the Family†on Sunday nights in October 1977. It was among primetime’s top 10 series in four of the next five seasons. Variety magazine listed it among the all-time best workplace comedies.
Linda Lavin, Tony-winning Broadway actress who starred in the sitcom ‘Alice,’ dies at 87​
Lavin died in Los Angeles on Sunday of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her representative, Bill Veloric, told The Associated Press in an email.
A success on Broadway, Lavin tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,†the Martin Scorsese-directed film that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for playing the title waitress.
The title was shortened to “Alice†and Lavin become a role model for working moms as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son working in a roadside diner outside Phoenix. The show, with Lavin singing the theme song "There's a New Girl in Town," ran from 1976 to 1985.
The show turned “Kiss my grits†into a catchphrase and co-starred Polly Holliday as waitress Flo and Vic Tayback as the gruff owner and head chef of Mel’s Diner.
The series bounced around the CBS schedule during its first two seasons but became a hit leading into “All in the Family†on Sunday nights in October 1977. It was among primetime’s top 10 series in four of the next five seasons. Variety magazine listed it among the all-time best workplace comedies.
Linda Lavin, Tony-winning Broadway actress who starred in the sitcom ‘Alice,’ dies at 87​
Comment