Alabama native Polly Holliday, TV’s “Flo,” dies at 88
FILE – Actor Polly Holliday appears outside the 46th Street Theater in New York on July 15, 1986. (AP Photo/Waring Abbott, File)
Jasper native Polly Holliday, a Tony Award-nominated screen and stage actor who turned the catchphrase “Kiss my grits!” into a national retort as the gum-chewing, beehive-wearing waitress aboard the long-running CBS sitcom “Alice,” has died. She was 88.
Holliday died Tuesday, September 9, at her home in New York, said her theatrical agent, Dennis Aspland. She was the last surviving member of the principal cast of “Alice;” Linda Lavin, who played the title character, died last year.
“Alice” 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 “Flo” in 1980. It lasted a year.
Holliday earned four Golden Globe nominations and won one in 1980 for “Alice,” as well as four Emmy Award nominations, three for “Alice” and one for “Flo.”
As for the “Kiss my grits!” line, Holliday was quick to distance herself from it, telling interviewers that the line was “pure Hollywood” and not a regional saying in Alabama. But she identified with Flo.
“She was a Southern woman you see in a lot of places,” she told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2003. “Not well educated, but very sharp, with a sense of humor and a resolve not to let life get her down.”
Born July 2, 1937, in Jasper, Holliday studied music at what is now the University of Montevallo and pursued graduate work at Florida State University. She taught school and honed her craft in repertory theaters before arriving on Broadway in 1974.
FILE – Actors Polly Holliday, center, and Vic Tayback, left, appear with actor Danny DeVito after receiving their Golden Globe awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 26, 1980. (AP Photo/George Brich, File)
Holliday’s career included stints on Broadway — including a Tony nod opposite Kathleen Turner in a 1990 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” — and lots of TV, including playing the blind sister to Betty White’s character in “Golden Girls.” On the big screen, her credits included John Grisham 1995 legal thriller series “The Client” and portraying a protective secretary in “All the President’s Men.”
Her Broadway credits include “All Over Town” in 1974 directed by Dustin Hoffman, “Arsenic and Old Lace” in 1986 with Jean Stapleton and Abe Vigoda, and a revival of “Picnic” with Kyle Chandler in 1994.
Some of her more memorable credits include the wicked Mrs. Deagle in “Gremlins,” Tim Allen’s sassy mother-in-law on “Home Improvement” and off-Broadway in “A Quarrel of Sparrows,” in which The New York Times said she radiated “a refreshingly touching air of willed, cheerful imperturbability.”
Despite her fame, she led a private life. She was deeply involved with Grace Episcopal Church in Greenwich Village, helping support its choral society and a chamber series, and she never married.
(Copyright 2025 The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
