Polly Holliday, best known for her role in the 1976 TV show Alice, has passed away at the age of 88. She died at her home in Manhattan on September 9.
The Alabama-born stage actress rose to fame playing the sassy waitress, Florence Jean Castleberry, in the CBS sitcom Alice. She portrayed the character for four seasons and also starred in the spin-off series, Flo.
Throughout her career, Holliday won two Golden Globes in 1979 and 1980. She also appeared in several movies, including Moon Over Parador, The Parent Trap, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Mr. Wrong. In 1990, she received a Tony nomination for her performance as Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
According to IMDb, Holliday was born in Jasper, Alabama, on July 2, 1937. Her father was a truck driver and her mother was a homemaker. She graduated from Childersburg High School in 1959. In a 1980 interview with People magazine, Holliday recalled, “We’d eat at truck stops, and there would always be a waitress like Flo with a joke ready.” She added, “The men would say all kinds of risqué things to her, but it was understood that it wasn’t serious, just a way to make everybody’s day happier.”
