Based on a relatively minor Martin Scorsese film, the weekly 30-minute sitcom followed the day-to-day of a widowed mom (played by Linda Lavin) who experienced car trouble in Arizona and never left. Nearly five decades after its 1976 debut, all but two of the original Alice cast members have died.
Unfortunately, on May 25, 1990, Vic suffered a heart attack which proved to be fatal. He was pronounced dead at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where he was rushed in the early morning hours after his wife called paramedics.
Holliday's success as the brassy, cynical, gregarious Flo on Alice (1976) (for which role she wore a red wig) reportedly did not endear her to the titular star of the show, Linda Lavin.
Polly Holliday left the show to star in her own spin-off series, Flo. In the episode airing February 24, 1980, Flo leaves to take a hostess job in Houston.
ALICE (1976) Cast THEN AND NOW 2023 Who Is Still Alive From ALICE?
Why did Diane Ladd leave Alice?
Rumored to be because of disagreements with Linda Lavin, Diane Ladd eventually left the series after covering up for Polly Holliday's absence for the tail end of season four, and being on the series for almost all of it's fifth season. The third (and final) waitress was Jolene Hunnicutt, played by Celia Weston.
The friction between the two actresses was such that Holliday left for her own short-lived spin-off series, Flo (1980). Alice (1976) remained on the air for several more seasons but Holliday never returned, even to make a guest appearance.
In season nine, at the close of the series, Alice decides to give up her waitress uniform and become a singer full time, a job which requires her to travel most of the time. Mel closes the diner, Vera becomes pregnant, Tommy continues college, Elliot gets promoted, and Jolene buys a beauty shop.
Polly Holliday left "Alice" in the middle of it's fourth season to star in her own show, where Flo moves to Texas. The series ran from March 24, 1980 to July 21, 1981. 29 episodes aired, though it is unkown whether more episodes where produced and filmed.
Though she dates from time to time, Vera lives alone but has one major love interest towards the end of the series: Elliot. They fall in love and get married, and by series end, are expecting their first child. Philip McKeon played Alice's witty son, Tommy.
He is a cancer cell biologist who is career driven, yet loves his wife dearly. John initially refuses to believe his wife's diagnosis, but eventually accepts the reality of the matter and tries to help his wife cope with her disease.
Linda Lavin was, by all accounts, a nasty piece of work. She made the situation on the set so intolerable that she once reduced Diane Ladd to tears. And, before Lavin got her relatively brief period of fame in “Alice,” she and Joan Rivers knew each other.
Ladd was married to actor and one-time co-star Bruce Dern from 1960 to 1969. They had two daughters, Diane Elizabeth, who died at age 18 months after a drowning accident, and Laura Elizabeth, who became an actress.
Laura Elizabeth Dern was born on February 10, 1967, in Los Angeles, California. The daughter of actors Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern and great-granddaughter of former Utah governor and Secretary of War George Dern, she was conceived while her parents were filming The Wild Angels.
Alfred Lutter, who played Tommy in the original movie, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, as well as in the pilot episode of the series, was thought to be too old for the long haul and was not chosen for the part.
Alabama native Polly Holliday portrayed Flo, a sassy waitress on the TV show "Alice," in the late 1970s. She coined the phrase "Kiss my grits!" This is the story of how one of the South's most ubiquitous phrases was created for a TV show set in Arizona.
Mel called Vera "Dingy"; Jolene "Blondie"; and would often tell everyone else to "stow it!" or later on, in the case of Jolene and Belle, "Bag it!" His greatest adversary, however, was Flo.
In the new movie Still Alice, Julianne Moore plays Alice Howland, a 50-year-old linguistics professor at Columbia with a razor-sharp intellect. She's at the prime of her career, but gradually she starts to forget things. She loses her way, she gets fuzzy — and she is soon diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
