THE NEW YORK TIMES – Polly Holliday, the adaptable actress who was best known for playing the brash but amiable Flo on the long-running sitcom “Alice,” and who also pursued a notable stage career for decades, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 88.
Her death was confirmed by Dennis Aspland, her theatrical agent and friend. It came less than a year after the death of Linda Lavin, who played the show’s title character.
Viewers of “Alice” could tell when Flo, a gum-chewing Southern diner waitress with attitude, was perturbed.
She’d pause momentarily, address the offender in the sweetest, most dulcet tones and then suggest, deadpan, “Kiss my grits.”
In the series, which was loosely based on Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and debuted on CBS in August 1976, Ms. Holliday’s character, Florence Jean Castleberry, was a flirtatious redhead — with waves and twists carefully teased and hair-sprayed in place. (It was a wig.)
Shamelessly man-crazy — she had been married three times — Flo called most people “sugar,” was much too vain to wear eyeglasses and was happy to explain her own considerable appeal.
As she pointed out to her boss (Vic Tayback) at the fictional roadside Mel’s Diner in Phoenix, “I’m attractive, I’m a good talker, I’m a good dancer, and the list goes on and on.”
Ms. Holliday, a multiple Emmy Award nominee, won the Golden Globe Award for best supporting actress in a television series in 1979 and 1980 …
