{"id":2014114,"date":"2025-09-11T12:52:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2014114"},"modified":"2025-09-11T12:52:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:52:36","slug":"polly-holliday-theater-star-famous-as-the-tart-waitress-flo-on-sitcom-alice-dies-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/polly-holliday-theater-star-famous-as-the-tart-waitress-flo-on-sitcom-alice-dies-at-88\/","title":{"rendered":"Polly Holliday, theater star famous as the tart waitress Flo on sitcom \u2018Alice,\u2019 dies at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Polly Holliday, a Tony Award-nominated screen and stage actor who turned the catchphrase \u201cKiss my grits!\u201d into a national retort as the gum-chewing, beehive-wearing waitress aboard the long-running CBS sitcom \u201cAlice,\u201d has died. She was 88.<\/p>\n

Holliday died Tuesday at her home in New York, said her theatrical agent, Dennis Aspland. She was the last surviving member of the principal cast of \u201cAlice;\u201d\u00a0Linda Lavin,<\/a>\u00a0who played the title character, died last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlice\u201d ran from 1976 to 1985, but Holliday had turned into such a star that the network gave her her own short-lived spin-off called \u201cFlo\u201d in 1980. It lasted a year.<\/p>\n

Holliday earned four Golden Globe nominations and won one in 1980 for \u201cAlice,\u201d as well as four Emmy Award nominations, three for \u201cAlice\u201d and one for \u201cFlo.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the \u201cKiss my grits!\u201d line, the Alabama-born Holliday was quick to distance herself from it, telling interviewers that the line was \u201cpure Hollywood\u201d and not a regional saying. But she identified with Flo.<\/p>\n

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\u201cShe was a Southern woman you see in a lot of places,\u201d she told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2003. \u201cNot well educated, but very sharp, with a sense of humor and a resolve not to let life get her down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holliday\u2019s career included stints on Broadway \u2014 including a Tony nod opposite Kathleen Turner in a 1990 revival of \u201cCat on a Hot Tin Roof\u201d \u2014 and lots of TV, including playing the blind sister to Betty White\u2019s character in \u201cGolden Girls.\u201d On the big screen, her credits included John Grisham 1995 legal thriller series \u201cThe Client\u201d and portraying a protective secretary in \u201cAll the President\u2019s Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her Broadway credits include \u201cAll Over Town\u201d in 1974 directed by Dustin Hoffman, \u201cArsenic and Old Lace\u201d in 1986 with Jean Stapleton and Abe Vigoda, and a revival of \u201cPicnic\u201d with Kyle Chandler in 1994.<\/p>\n

Some of her more memorable credits include the wicked Mrs. Deagle in \u201cGremlins,\u201d Tim Allen\u2019s sassy mother-in-law on \u201cHome Improvement\u201d and off-Broadway in \u201cA Quarrel of Sparrows,\u201d in which The New York Times said she radiated \u201ca refreshingly touching air of willed, cheerful imperturbability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feature Image: From AP by Warring Abbott<\/p>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source barrie360.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Polly Holliday, a Tony Award-nominated screen and stage actor who turned the catchphrase \u201cKiss my grits!\u201d into a national retort as the gum-chewing, beehive-wearing waitress aboard the long-running CBS sitcom \u201cAlice,\u201d has died. She was 88. Holliday died Tuesday at her home in New York, said her theatrical agent, Dennis Aspland. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2014115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2014114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Polly-Holliday-theater-star-famous-as-the-tart-waitress-Flo.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2014114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2014115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2014114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2014114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2014114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}