Alice works alongside Mel Sharples (Vic Tayback), the grouchy, stingy owner and cook of the greasy spoon, and fellow waitresses and friends, sassy, man-hungry Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry (Polly Holliday), and neurotic, scatterbrained Vera Louise Gorman (Beth Howland).
Polly Dean Holliday (born July 2, 1937) is an American actress who has appeared on stage, television and in film. She is best known for her portrayal of sassy waitress Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry on the 1970s sitcom Alice, which she reprised in its short-lived spin-off, Flo.
Beth Howland played Vera Gorman (later Novack), the well-mannered but ditzy waitress. A lot of mishaps in the Diner are as a result of Vera and her clumsiness. Through her, we also get to meet her landlady, another classic repeat character, Mrs. Walden, played by none other than Linda Lavin herself.
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.
Television, began casting roles for “Alice.” The CBS series, based on the 1974 Martin Scorsese film “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,” required three waitresses for Mel's Diner, the locus of the action, one of them the high-strung Vera, played in the film by Valerie Curtin.
Alice | Season 1: Kiss My Grits! | Warner Bros. Entertainment
What disease does Still Alice have?
This movie features many of the difficulties that surround leading a life with Alzheimer's disease. Upon official diagnosis, Alice learns she has familial Alzheimer's disease and may have passed the causative genes on to her children.
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 "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.
Belle, however, longed for a music and songwriting career, and after working with Mel, finally found her big break and went to Nashville, Tennessee, where, some years later, Alice herself ended up going.
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.
What happened to the actress who played Flo on Alice?
After leaving Alice, and after a brief period playing Flo in a spin-off series of the same name, Polly went on to perform in numerous stage productions, films and television roles. She was nominated for a Tony award for her starring role on Broadway as Big Mama in "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" in 1990.
In the episode airing February 24, 1980, Flo leaves to take a hostess job in Houston. On the way to Houston, Flo stops at her hometown Fort Worth, Texas (which she refers to by its moniker "Cowtown").
One of the waitresses was a Southern lady with a very feisty attitude. Whenever somebody pissed her off she would say: “Kiss my grits!” Which would be a polite way (because Southern people are always very polite) of telling them to kiss her butt. Related questions (More answers below)
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.
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.
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.
Flo is a fictional saleswoman character appearing in more than 1,000 advertisements for Progressive Insurance since 2008. Portrayed by actress and comedian Stephanie Courtney, the character has developed a fan base on social networks and has become an iconic advertising mascot.
Ultimately, Flo concluded its run after 29 episodes. Despite the cancellation, Flo character never returned to Alice. except for the use of her image in old clips.
Still Alice is based on a novel of the same name published in 2007. The novel was written by Lisa Genova, a neuroscientist who was inspired by her grandmother's development of Alzheimer's disease to write about the disease from a firsthand perspective.
The story is based on the very real history of black Americans still being enslaved even after the Emancipation Proclamation. The most prominent example of this, on which the movie is based, is the life of Mae Louise Walls Miller.
Alice finds out she has the Presenilin mutation. George-Hyslop's essay discusses the significance of a mutation on the Presenilin 1 and 2 genes as being linked to familial Alzheimer's. Alice tells her family what medicines Dr. Benjamin prescribes her: Aricept and Namenda (2014, 27:04).
