Alice (TV series)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Alice | |
|---|---|
 Alice title card |
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| Genre | Sitcom |
| Running time | approx. 0:30 (per episode) |
| Creator(s) | Robert Getchell |
| Starring | Linda Lavin Philip McKeon Vic Tayback Polly Holliday Beth Howland Diane Ladd Celia Weston |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Original run | August 31, 1976–July 2, 1985 |
| No. of episodes | 202 |
| IMDb profile | |
Alice was an American television sitcom series which ran from August 31, 1976 to July 2, 1985 on CBS.
The series was based on the movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974).
Finding herself an unemployed widow after her husband, Donald, was killed in a truck accident, Alice Hyatt and her young son, Tommy, moved out of their home in New Jersey and began traveling to Los Angeles in hopes that she would find a singing career. Her car broke down in Phoenix, Arizona and she took a job as a waitress at Mel's Diner where she worked alongside Mel (the grouchy, stingy owner/cook) and fellow waitresses (and friends) sassy, man-hungry Flo and neurotic, scatterbrained Vera.
In the middle of the 1979-1980 season, Flo left (to go to her own spin-off series Flo) - in the storyline of Alice, she left to take a hostess job in Houston but then decided to run her own restaurant - and Diane Ladd (who played Flo in the film version) joined the cast as Belle, a hard-edged but kind-hearted woman who had a past with Mel and had a failed catchphrase in "my little voice." In spite of Ladd's talents, the character never gelled with most of the fans. In early 1981, Ladd left the series and was replaced by theater actress Celia Weston, who played the good-natured, boisterous truck driver Jolene Hunnicutt. In the storyline of the show, Belle left to take a job as a backup singer in Nashville.
Jolene's character arrives as she and her male truck-driving partner are in the midst of a disagreement over her partner's unwelcome advances while on the job. Before the episode ended, Mel agreed to hire Jolene "temporarily" to pay for damages she had created, and the character lasted until the end of the series more than four years later.
As the series progressed, it began to focus more on character development, such as the courtship and marriage of Vera and loveable cop Elliot. By the 1984-1985 season, many of the more plausible situations imaginable had been exhausted and Lavin seemed disinterested in continuing the character of Alice (Alice was absent several times in the last year due to Lavin directing a number of episodes or playing another role as Vera's wizened landlady). The series concluded on July 2, 1985. In the last episode of the series, Mel sold the diner and (surprisingly) gave each of his waitresses a $5000 farewell bonus; Jolene opened a beauty parlor; Vera had become pregnant and planned to be a full-time mother and Alice finally got a recording contract (after nine years of trying to get it) and moved to Nashville.
Mel's mother was played by Martha Raye and she featured in many episodes as well as Mel's girlfriend Marie. A number of other characters appeared on a semi-regular basis.
As an ongoing gag, the front of Mel's diner was often destroyed, notably by Flo crashing a truck through it, and the girls landing a hot air balloon in the diner, among other gimmicks. Mel was always horrified to see his diner destroyed. Upon crashing through the roof at Mel's in a hot air baloon, Jolene cries, "We went to the bad place and it looks just like Mel's!"
Vic Tayback (Mel Sharples) died in 1990, but most of the other cast members have continued to appear fairly regularly in theater, television and the occasional film.
Flo's catch phrase, "Kiss my grits" was briefly popular at the time the show ran.
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[edit] Cast
- Linda Lavin - Alice Hyatt
- Philip McKeon - Tommy Hyatt (Alfred Lutter briefly reprised his role from the movie but was replaced after the pilot episode)
- Vic Tayback - Mel Sharples (Tayback reprised his role from the movie)
- Beth Howland - Vera Louise Gorman
- Polly Holliday - Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry (1976-1980)
- Diane Ladd - Isabelle "Belle" Dupree (1980-1981) (Ladd played the role of Flo in the movie)
- Celia Weston - Jolene Hunnicutt (1981-1985)
- Martha Raye - Carrie Sharples (Mel's mother) (1978-1985)
- Charles Levin - Elliot Novak (1983-1985)
- Marvin Kaplan - Henry Beesmeyer (1977-1985)
- Victoria Carroll - Marie Massey (1978-1984)
[edit] DVD
On June 27, 2006, 6 episodes of Alice were released on DVD as part of the Warner Brothers' Television Favorites Compilation. The episodes were hand picked by fans at SitcomsOnline.com and are as follows:
- Alice Gets a Pass, 08/31/76 - Pilot episode.
- The Odd Couple, 02/26/77 - When Flo's trailer is stolen, Alice allows Flo to move in with her. Alice finds Flo's habits difficult to deal with.
- Close Encounters of the Worst Kind, 01/22/78 - Alice's use of psychology causes tension among her coworkers.
- Block Those Kicks, 10/22/78 - The waitresses decide to give up their bad habits in order to encourage Mel to give up his gambling habit.
- Cabin Fever, 12/02/79 - The waitresses, Mel and his girlfriend unknowingly book the same cabin during the same weekend.
- Flo's Farewell, 02/24/80 - Flo leaves Mel's diner for a hosting job at a restaurant in Texas.
[edit] Trivia
- A popular computer game, Diner Dash, features a character named Flo who tries to build a restaurant empire, working as waitress and busboy as well as owner. However, this Flo comes from a background in finance/accounting (per the opening of the game), with no known prior restaurant experience.
- The waitress that works for Dex at the diner in the movie Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones, is named F.L.O. and even has a "southern" robotic accent. This may have been inspired by the Alice episode "The Robot Wore Pink", where Mel uses an automated waitress to replace Alice.
- Though the character Flo had red hair, Polly Holliday was actually a brunette and wore a strawberry auburn behive wig as Flo.
- There are no real places in Phoenix, Arizona, that correspond to the various settings of the sitcom (such as Mel's Diner or Alice's apartment) with the exception of Arizona State University, which Tommy eventually wound up attending.
- Though the sitcom was based in Phoenix, in the film vesion (though Alice and Tommy do travel through Phoenix) it is in Tucson, Arizona that they settle, and where Mel's Diner is located.
- CBS aired reruns of Alice in its daytime lineup from June 1980 to September 1982 at 10:30am (EST). Later in the late '80s, reruns turned up on TBS Superstation.
- Though the TV series was set in Phoenix, the movie was set in Tucson. In the movie, Alice was from New Mexico; but the producers moved Alice to New Jersey to accommodate Lavin's accent.
- Flo, Vera, and Alice were supposed to be a number of years apart from one another, but the three actresses were all rather close in age. Flo was supposed to be several years older than Alice, presumably in her mid-to-late 40s. However, Polly Holliday was 39 when the series began in 1976. Alice was supposed to be 35, but Linda Lavin was just 3 months younger than Holliday. Vera was referred to as a "kid" and was presumably in her 20s, but Beth Howland was 35 in 1976, just 4 years younger than Holliday.
- The show was rerun on two channels: E! Entertainment Television from the mid-90s until early 1998; and then on the defunct TNN from late June of 1999 to January of 2001.
- Currently airs for free on the internet on AOL's In2TV service.[1]
- The "i" network struck a deal with Warner Bros for several of their older series to air on the network beginning in August 2006. Alice was among the series listed in the press release.
• Despite being nominated for an Emmy award for her work on "Alice," Diane Ladd, as Belle, was unpopular both with the audience and her co-stars, in particular Linda Lavin, who felt Ladd was deliberately trying to upstage them.
[edit] The Alice Sets
The Mel's Diner set made changes over the years; in the pilot the diner contained a blue refrigerator, but in the series the refrigerator was a dirty stainless steel, then later was changed to clean and shiny stainless steel (which continued until the end of the series in 1985). However the rest of the sets remained the same.
