Polly Holliday
(Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Polly Holliday, the Tony-nominated actress who was best known for playing the waitress Florence Jean “Flo” Castleberry on the 1970s sitcom Alice died on September 9. She was 88.
Polly Dean Holliday was born in Jasper, Alabama on July 2, 1937. She earned a degree in music at Alabama State Women’s College (now the University of Montevallo) and a master’s in music education at Florida State University. She moved to New York City in 1972, making her Broadway debut two years later in All Over Town, directed by Dustin Hoffman. Two years after that, she had her major break with Alice with Hoffman instrumental in her casting. Her hash-slinger character’s catch phrase “Kiss my grits!” became part of the American lexicon.
Holliday went on to play the role of Amanda Wingfield in a production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie in1979 at the Guthrie Theater. She returned to the Broadway stage in Arsenic and Old Lace in 1986 and was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as Big Mama in a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1990. Her last Broadway credit was in 1994 for Picnic , though she was back on the New York stage in The Time of the Cuckoo in 2000 at Lincoln Center Theater.
In addition to her many television credits, including Golden Girls and Home Improvement, Holliday appeared on the big screen in All The President’s Men, Gremlins, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Parent Trap and more.
