Flo from "Alice," "Gremlins" Costar Polly Holliday Passes Away at Age 88, Had Numerous Walt Disney Company Roles

Some sad news out of Hollywood today, as actress Polly Holliday has passed away at the age of 88. Though she was best known for her role as Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry in the late-1970s CBS sitcom Alice and its spinoff Flo, Holliday also played numerous roles in productions for The Walt Disney Company.

In 1977, she co-starred alongside Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty in W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings for the now-Disney-owned 20th Century Studios (then called Fox). Then in 1985 she played Lucille in the Disney Channel original movie Lots of Luck starring Martin Mull and Annette Funicello. In 1993 she appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire (again for Fox) alongside Robin Williams and Sally Field, and three years later she had a role in Mr. Wrong (for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures) with Ellen DeGeneres. Also in 1996, she co-starred in the ABC Network original movie A Loss of Innocence, and in 1998, she played Marva Kulp Sr. in Disney’s The Parent Trap remake starring Lindsay Lohan and Dennis Quaid. She had a recurring role as Lillian Patterson in the 90s ABC sitcom Home Improvement, and she played Judge Westreich in Touchstone / Buena Vista’s 2006 dramedy Stick It starring Jeff Bridges.

To fans of director Joe Dante’s 1984 horror-comedy Gremlins from Warner Bros., she will forever be known as the irascible Mrs. Deagle, and she also had a role in Warner’s acclaimed political thriller All the President’s Men in 1976. But television viewers of a certain age will always remember her as Flo, the sassy waitress (with the “Kiss my grits!" catch phrase) at Mel’s Diner in Alice and Flo’s Yellow Rose in the sitcom spinoff Flo. Notably, singer-songwriter Hoyt Axton performed the theme song for Flo, and later went on to star alongside Polly Holliday in Gremlins.

Holliday was born in Jasper, Alabama in 1937 and passed away this week from pneumonia at her home in New York City. She will be missed.