Polly Holliday, a prolific stage and screen actress known for playing the gum-smacking waitress Flo who popularized the phrase “Kiss my grits!” on the long-running CBS sitcom “Alice,” died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 88. Holliday’s death was confirmed to the New York Times by her longtime agent and friend Dennis Aspland.
Holliday was a supporting player on “Alice,” which starred Linda Lavin as a widowed Mel’s Diner waitress, but her performance as the redhead Florence Jean Castleberry was one the brightest, funniest turns on the series. Featuring in the show’s first four seasons, she was nominated for three Emmy awards and twice won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress in a television series. CBS then brought Holliday onto her own spinoff series, “Flo,” which followed the character as she returned to Texas to operate a saloon. The show lasted two seasons.
But the theater was where Holliday’s career began, and it was where she did some of her most celebrated work. She was nominated in best featured actress at the 1990 Tony Awards for her performance in a revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” starring opposite Charles Durning.
On film, Holliday played one of the most memorable death scenes of the 1980’s featuring in Joe Dante’s suburban satire “Gremlins.” Holliday played the wicked Mrs. Deagle, who is killed by the eponymous critters after they slingshot her out of her manor’s window using a stairlift.
Born July 2, 1937 in Jasper, Ala., Holliday ventured into theater productions while majoring in piano at Alabama College for Women. She joined the Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota in 1962, while she was attending Florida Sate University for music education. After nearly 10 years with the company, she moved to New York, making her Broadway debut in 1974 in the Murray Schisgal comedy “All Over Town,” directed by Dustin Hoffman. Years later, Hoffman would seek Holliday’s consultation in developing his performance for Sydney Pollack’s “Tootsie,” in which he plays a washed-up actor that saves his career by posing under the alter ego of Dorothy Michaels, a feisty but fair Southern soap opera star.
Other notable credits include “All the President’s Men,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Parent Trap,” with TV roles as Tim Allen’s mother-in-law on “Home Improvement” and appearances on “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “The Golden Girls” and “Amazing Stories.” Her last film credit was in 2010 with Doug Liman’s political thriller “Fair Game.”
Holliday left no immediate survivors.