Linda Lavigne, the Tony Award-winning stage actress who became a working-class icon when she wore a paper hat as a waitress on the TV sitcom “Alice,” has died. She was 87 years old.
Lavigne died unexpectedly Sunday from complications of recently discovered lung cancer, her representative, Michael Gagliardo, told CBS News in an email.
After her success on Broadway, Lavigne tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She has been tapped to star in a new CBS comedy series based on “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” the Martin Scorsese-directed film that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for her role as the waitress.
Photography by Axel/Power Griffin/FilmMagic
The title was shortened to “Alice” and Lavigne became a role model for working mothers like Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son who worked at a roadside diner outside Phoenix. The show, on which Lavigne sang the theme song “There’s a New Girl in Town,” ran from 1976 to 1985.
The show turned “Kiss my grits” into a catchphrase and co-starred Polly Holiday as waitress Flo and Vic Tayback as the gruff owner and head chef of Mel’s Diner.
The series bounced around the CBS schedule during its first two seasons but became such a hit that it led to “All in the Family” being shown on Sunday nights in October 1977. It was among the top 10 primetime series in four of the next five seasons. Variety magazine listed it as one of the best workplace comedies of all time.
Lavigne soon won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound” in 1987.
Photo by CBS via Getty Images
As recently as this month, she was promoting a new Netflix series in which she appears called “No Good Deed,” and is filming an upcoming Hulu series called “Mid-Century Modern,” according to Deadline, which first reported her death.
Lavigne grew up in Portland, Maine, and moved to New York City after graduating from the College of William and Mary. She sang in nightclubs and in group shows.
Famed producer and director Hal Prince gave Lavigne her first big break while directing the Broadway musical “She’s a Bird… She’s a Plane… She’s Superman.” She received a Tony nomination for her role in Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” in 1969 before winning a Tony Award 18 years later for another Simon play, “Broadway Bound.”
In the mid-1970s, Lavigne moved to Los Angeles. She had a recurring role in the movie “Barney Miller” and in 1976 she was chosen to play the title role in the movie “Alice.”
Returning to Broadway, Lavigne starred in Paul Rudnick’s comedy “The New Century,” performed in the musical “Songs & Confessions of a One-Time Waitress” and received a Tony nomination in Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories.”
Michael Koschwara of the Associated Press praised Lavin in Collected Stories, writing that she “gives one of those full, precise performances, capturing a woman’s intellectual vigor, her wry humor, and her heightened physical fragility with startling sincerity. Lavin’s sense of timing is exquisite, whether… That’s while telling a joke or poignantly dissecting her student’s work.
Lavigne enjoyed a wave of renewed attention in her 70s, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Nicky Silver’s The Lyons. She also starred in “Other Desert Cities” and a revival of “Follies” before they moved to Broadway.
The Associated Press again raved about Plavin in The Lyons, calling her “an absolute wonder to behold as Rita Lyons, a whiny mother with a set of deeply held beliefs and eye rolls, a mother who suffocates and keeps everyone within arm’s reach.”
She also appeared in the movie “Wanderlust” with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and released her first CD, “Possibilities.” She played Jennifer Lopez’s grandmother in the movie The Back-Up Plan.
When asked about mentorship for up-and-coming actresses, Lavigne stressed one thing. “I say what happened for me is work brings work. As long as it wasn’t morally reprehensible to me, I did it,” she told the AP in 2011.
She and Steve Bakunas, an artist, musician, and third husband, converted an old parking garage into the 50-seat Red Barn Studio Theater in Wilmington, North Carolina.
It opened in 2007 and their productions include John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt,” David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Lindsay Abbey’s “Rabbit Hole,” and Charles Bush’s “Allergist’s Wife’s Tale,” in which Lavigne also starred in Broadway, and received a Tony nomination.
She returned to television in 2013 in Will & Grace’s Sean Saves the World, a show that ran for a season. Lavigne also appeared on the shows “Mom” and “9JKL.”