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Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning stage actress who became a working-class symbol for her role as a paper-hatted waitress in the TV sitcom “Alice,” has died. She was 87 years old.
Ms. Rabin died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her agent Bill Veroric told The Associated Press in an email.
After finding success on Broadway, Lavin tried his luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She has been chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on Martin Scorsese’s film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, in which Ellen Burstyn won an Oscar for her role as Waitress.
The title was shortened to “Alice,” and Lavin became a role model for working mothers as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother of a 12-year-old son who worked in a roadside diner outside Phoenix. The show, with Lavin singing the theme song “There’s a New Girl in Town,” aired from 1976 to 1985.
The show adopted the tagline “Kiss My Grits” and co-starred Polly Holliday as waitress Flo and Vic Tyback as Mel’s Diner’s surly owner and head chef.
The series moved around CBS’ schedule for its first two seasons, but it became a hit leading to “All in the Family” on Sunday nights in October 1977. It was a top 10 primetime series in four of its next five seasons. Variety magazine named it one of the best workplace comedies of all time.
Lavin soon won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in Neil Simon’s 1987 play Broadway Bound, as well as the Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Award, and Helen Hayes Award.
“She was a wonderful performer with a generous heart,” the union Actors Equity said on the X show. In 2023, the union Actors Equity awarded her the Richard Seff Award, given to veteran supporting actor, for her performance in Noah Diaz’s You Will Get. disease. “
As recently as this month, she was busy promoting her new Netflix series No Good Deed and filming her upcoming Hulu series Mid-Century Modern, according to Deadline, which first reported her death. He said he was working on it. She also guest-starred in 2024 on “Elsbeth,” a spin-off of “The Good Wife.”
Rabin grew up in Portland, Maine and moved to New York City after graduating from the College of William and Mary. She sang in ensembles in nightclubs and shows.
Iconic producer and director Hal Prince gave Lavin her first big break by directing the Broadway musical It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1969 for Simon’s The Last of the Red Hot Lovers and won 18 years later for another Simon play, Broadway Bound.
In the mid-1970s, Lavin moved to Los Angeles. She had a recurring role on “Barney Miller,” and in 1976 was cast as the lead in a new CBS sitcom based on Ellen Burstyn’s Oscar-winning waitress comedy-drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” was selected.
Returning to Broadway, Lavin later starred in Paul Rudnick’s comedy The New Century, had a concert show called Songs and Confessions of a One-Time Waitress, and performed in Donald Margulies’ Collected. He was nominated for a Tony Award for “Stories”.
“A star of all media, but a pure theatrical genius. So funny, so emotional, the audience adored her. She never disappointed. , just watching her rehearse and craft her performance was an educational experience and a great joy,” Rudnick wrote of X.
The Associated Press’s Michael Kuchwara praised Lavin in Collected Stories, saying she had “an astonishing sense of a woman’s intellectual vitality, her wry sense of humor, and her increasingly frail body.” He shows a perfect and subtle performance that is faithfully captured.” And Lavin has a great sense of timing, whether he’s cracking a joke or dissecting his protégé’s work. ”
In her 70s, Lavin returned to prominence and was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in Nikki Silver’s The Lions. She also appeared in revivals of “Other Desert Cities” and “Follies” before moving to Broadway.
The Associated Press once again praised Lavin for “The Lions,” calling her “an absolute wonder to play Rita Lyons, the suffocating yet controlling matriarch with her firm convictions and eye-rolling motherly nagging.” ”. length. “
She also appeared in the film Wanderlust with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, released her first CD Possibilities, and played Jennifer Lopez’s grandmother in The Backup Plan .
When asked to provide guidance to up-and-coming actors, Lavin emphasizes one thing. “What happened to me was that work called work. Unless it was morally reprehensible to me, I did it,” she told The Associated Press in 2011.
She and her third husband, artist and musician Steve Bakunas, converted an old auto garage in Wilmington, North Carolina, into the 50-seat Red Barn Studio Theater.
It opened in 2007 and includes John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Rabbit Hole, and Charles Bush’s The Allergist’s Wife. Lavin appeared in works such as “Monogatari”. He also starred on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award.
She returned to television in 2013 in “Shaun Saves the World,” starring Sean Hayes from “Will & Grace,” and the show lasted one season. Lavin also appeared on “Mom” and “9JKL.”
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AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton contributed from Los Angeles.
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