How Polly Holliday Turned Childhood Memories Into ‘Alice’s Most Iconic Character

FLO, Polly Holliday, (TV GUIDE cover shoot, November 8-14, 1980), 1980-81. — TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection

What To Know

Polly Holliday, beloved for her role as Flo on Alice, passed away at age 88, marking the loss of the last original cast member.
Holliday based her iconic portrayal of Flo on her childhood experiences with her truck driver father and the tough, witty waitresses they encountered at roadside diners.

It is always sad to hear when we lose one of the stars we grew up watching on TV. Polly Holliday, the wonderful actress who played the sassy waitress Florence Jean Castleberry on the TV show Alice, passed away last year at the age of 88 after a brief period of declining health.

Holliday was the last original cast member from Alice to leave us. She never married or had children, but she left behind a character that millions felt they knew well. For anyone who watched Alice, Flo was unforgettable. Yep, without a doubt, there was a point back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when TV audiences would tune in eagerly to see who Flo would say “Kiss my grits!” to that week.

Holliday knew that Flo would always have a special place in her career. Speaking to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2003, she said this, “Flo was a wonderful character, and I think that was some of the best work I’ve ever done.”

While she was not the first actress to play Flo, that honor goes to actress Diane Ladd; Holliday’s version was unique and special, which caused many to wonder: where did she get her inspiration?

For Holliday, a lot of her inspiration for Flo came from a very personal place: her experiences as a young girl spending time, often just one day a week, with her father after he and Holliday’s mother had divorced.

In a 1981 interview with journalist Marian Christy, Holliday talked about how her dad played a big part in creating the character of Flo. Because of the divorce, she didn’t get to spend much time with her father, who was a truck driver. According to Holliday, when she did spend time with him as a child, she loved hanging out with him in his big rig. They would stop to eat lunch at roadside diners, socializing with gum-chewing waitresses who strutted their stuff in starched uniforms and teased hairdos.

Lee White/Courtesy Everett Collection

Mike Barnes, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, shared this memory directly from Holliday: “We’d eat at truck stops, and there would always be a waitress like Flo with a joke ready. The men would say all kinds of risqué things to her, but it was understood that it wasn’t serious, just a way to make everybody’s day happier.”

When creating her version of Flo, Holliday drew from the things said by her not-always-politically-correct father to whatever tough-as-nails, sassy waitress might be serving up the coffee and flapjacks. That mix of being so confident on the outside while maintaining a hidden soft side was a big part of what made Flo. Underneath it all, she was a romantic. She was looking for that one person who would see through her tough-as-nails act and love her for who she was.

Now, with all that said, life with her father wasn’t just about fun and adventure. Witnessing her father’s struggles and disappointments helped Holliday learn how to be independent, which was a quality she definitely gave to Flo. At a very early age, she realized you cannot always count on other people and that you have to be able to stand on your own two feet. That, in a nutshell, was Flo. She wasn’t always perfect and definitely not a saint, but Flo was a survivor just like Holliday herself.