(October 15, 1937 – December 29, 2024)
Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning Broadway actress who was best known for starring as a waitress and single mom on the long-running sitcom “Alice,” died on Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 87.
Michael Gagliardo, a representative, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.
To most American television viewers, Ms. Lavin was a new face when “Alice” — a comedy based on the movie “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama starring Ellen Burstyn — had its premiere. Playing a widowed mother who, on her way to pursuing a musical career in Los Angeles, takes a job at Mel’s Diner after her car breaks down, Ms. Lavin wasn’t yet widely known nationally.
But to theatergoers, especially in New York, she was a proven quantity, having performed in eight Broadway productions between 1962 and 1973, including the lead role in Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” (1969).
“Alice” ran from 1976 to 1985 and earned Ms. Lavin two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy nomination. After the show ended, she promptly returned to her first love, the New York stage, and in 1987 won the Tony Award for best actress in a play for her role as Kate Jerome, a 1940s Brooklyn matriarch facing the postwar world, in Mr. Simon’s “Broadway Bound.”
In 2024, Ms. Lavin appeared in three episodes of the Netflix comedy “No Good Deed.” And in 2025 she’ll be seen in leading roles in two other productions: alongside Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer in a new comedy series on Hulu, “Mid-Century Modern,” about three gay men who retire to Palm Springs, Calif.; and in the movie comedy “One Big Happy Family,” to be released in January.
