Goodbye to the 'New Girl in Town'

Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actor who became a working-class icon as a paper-hat-wearing waitress on the TV sitcom Alice, has died. She was 87. Lavin died in Los Angeles on Sunday of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her representative told the AP. A success on Broadway, Lavin tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, the Martin Scorsese-directed film that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for playing the title waitress. The title was shortened to Alice, and Lavin become a role model for working moms as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son working in a roadside diner outside Phoenix. The show, with Lavin singing the theme song "There's a New Girl in Town," ran from 1976 to 1985.

Lavin 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 ensembles of shows. Iconic producer and director Hal Prince gave Lavin her first big break while directing the Broadway musical It's a Bird ... It's a Plane ... It's Superman. She went on to earn a Tony nomination in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers in 1969 before winning 18 years later for another Simon play, Broadway Bound. In 1976 she was chosen to star in Alice. The show became a hit leading into All in the Family on Sunday nights in October 1977. It was among prime time's top 10 series in four of the next five seasons. Variety listed it among the all-time best workplace comedies.

Lavin basked in a burst of renewed attention in her 70s, earning a Tony nomination for Nicky Silver's The Lyons. She also appeared in the film Wanderlust with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd and played Jennifer Lopez's grandmother in The Back-Up Plan. She also released her first CD, Possibilities. Lavin was working as recently as this month, promoting a new Netflix series in which she appears, No Good Deed, and filming a forthcoming Hulu series, Mid-Century Modern, according to Deadline. More here.

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