More Than Alice

Said the drama critic of the Virginia Gazette of a William and Mary freshman from Portland, Maine: “With pretty, fluttering mannerisms she effectively concealed the almost sadistic sense of humor of her character in an incongruous manner which kept the audience roaring.”

After her second play of the evening, on March 16, 1956, the same critic wrote: “Her singing, while not good, was not bad, either, and was handled with utter confidence and perfect diction.”

A year later, she was a lead in the college’s mounting of Romeo and Juliet. All of this was a far cry from what she became best-known for—starring in a TV sitcom where audiences guffawed week after week at such wit as “Kiss my grits!” and “Stow it, dingy!”

Linda Lavin picked up an Emmy nomination and two Golden Globes for the title role on Alice. Viewers connected with her, as the series lasted nine seasons.

She was a hit on Broadway before and after Alice, winning a Tony in 1970 and being nominated five other times, up to 2012. She toured in the mid-1960s in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

Lavin made her William and Mary debut on October 19, 1955 in Dial M For Murder. The locals claimed her as one of their own, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch of June 3, 1966 gave a summary of her career and her latest show on the Great White Way.

‘Glory’ Graduate Has Won Broadway’s Top Typing Job
By SUE DICKINSON
NEW YORK—A self-styled “rotten typist” has just landed New York’s most glamorous secretarial job.
Since March 29, Linda Lavin, a William and Mary graduate (1959) has portrayed Sydney, Girl Friday to gossip columnist Max Mencken, in the musical hit “It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s SUPERMAN” (Alvin Theater).
Fortunately, her new role does not tax her secretarial abilities. Instead, she livens the office of the Daily Planet by flirting outrageously with the prudish Clark Kent (played by Bob Holiday), almost discovering his true identity as SUPERMAN while she sings “You’ve Got Possibilities.”
Later she teases her egotistic boss (played by Jack Cassidy), for whom she has long carried the torch, with another Strouse-Adams hit “Ooh, Do You Love You!’
HER TYPING notwithstanding, Linda Lavin is assured of her job for many moons. Her way with a song and a comic line has evoked raves: “. . . pure imp . . . I wish she were in every musical and revue” (Stanley Kauffmann, N. Y. Times); “...a delightful comedienne . . . Singer, dancer, actress—Linda’s a comer.” (Emory Lewis, CUE).
Twice since she acquired her steno pad at the Planet has her picture graced the front pafe of the N. Y. Times Drama Section: in a Hirschfeld cartoon on March 27 and on June 5, when critic Kauffmaun cited her as one of those talented young actresses who “helped to make a dry season less of a desert.”
To make her job even more enviable Linda Lavin appears in a glamorous but very wearable career-girl wardrobe. Interviewed backstage, she explained, “Sydney is a chic girl and would be well up on fashion. And I’m glad for that.”
NOTING WITH PLEASURE that it was the first time a wardrobe had been specially designed for her, the attractive, black-haired actress pointed out that costumer Florence Klotz is short herself and so is very aware of the figure problems of us short girls.”
Linda Lavin changed into her own print shift in a dressing room that was virtually papered in congratulatory telegrams. A low coffee table patterned in green and blue tiles proved to be her own handiwork. “My sister, who was an actress before her marriage, helped me do it during a recent visit.”
The talented daughters of Mr. and Mrs. David Lavin were raised in Portland, Maine. They come by their talent naturally, for their mother, the former Lucille Potter, was a professional singer and had her own radio show in Portland.

“I WAS ALWAYS performing somewhere,” Linda Lavin recalls of her girlhood, but she had no theatrical aspirations “because I felt I wasn’t a strong enough character to cope with this rat race.”
Her matriculation at William and Mary was a matter of love at first sight. “A friend from Petersburg and I visited Washington, D.C. once,” she recalled. “She convinced me that it was part of my education to attend a Southern college and then took me to Williamburg. I fell madly in love with the college. It was just what I wanted—small and coed, with all that ivy and tradition.”
Her goal then was to be a French interpreter at the United Nations. “The French teacher talked me out of that, explaining that no American is that good in languages,” she laughed. “That made me realize how much I wanted to act.”
AFTER ONE WEEK on campus Linda Lavin auditioned for “Dial M for Murder” and was cast as the wife, a rare accolade for a freshman to be given a leading role.
“Miss Althea Hunt was director and head of the drama department then,” she remembered. “She is an incredibLe woman — vital, resourceful, dynamic. She made great demands on us. I owe her a great deal.”
The old Phi Beta Kappa Hall had burned the year before, so her initial dramatic endeavors were in loca1 schools and the gym.
“But my sophomore year they built the finest non-professional theater in the country. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was the opening production; I was Juliet. The mechanical equipment is so advanced that New York theaters can’t afford. It doesn’t even bother me that I’ll never have another such theater, because I had one once. It was thrilling to work in such a place and learn so many forms and styles of theater.”
LINDA LAVIN NOTED that campus productions ranged from Shakespeare through Restoration comedy and Ibsen to contemporary drama. “There is no training ground for the theater now except in the academic situation,” she said earnestly.
Restoration comedy and today’s musical comedy are “very much alike in terms of style and dealing with an audience,” Miss Lavin said. “I had considered myself only a dramatic actress but found I could do comedy in ‘The Matchmaker.’ Howard Scammon, who took over after Miss Hunt’s illness, directed it. He has such a facility for pace, movement and design that he can make anybody funny. The New York theater could use his talents.”
Following her sophomore year Linda Lavin became a summer resident of Williamsburg to play the Widow Huzzitt in “The Common Glory,” appear in afternoon productions of “The Founders,” and, she explained with a grimace, “to repeat a history course I flunked.”
“THAT SUMMER conditioned me to doing two performances a day. And Howard Scammon really taught us to project our voice, because those amphitheaters had no microphones. It was a marvelous summer—wonderful to be in Williamsburg as a citizen,” she recalled, adding with the comedienne’s true talent for timing, “And I passed that history.”
During another vacation she visited her godparents in New Jersey and heard that singers were needed for a tent show there. “It was my first Cinderella story. I sang for director Bert Yarborough who for several years directed a summer stock company in Richmond, got a chorus job and floated back to New Jersey. We did 10 musicals in 10 weeks,” she remembered. “After graduation I was doing part-time work typing and read that he was casting ‘Oh, Kay’ for off-Broadway. I auditioned and got a part as one of the six Cottontails in my first New York show.”
HER FIRST BROADWAY production was “The Family Affair” in four small parts. Nothing that Harold Prince directed that musical and “SUPERMAN,” she added, “The world does come around to itself after all.”
Linda Lavin won a Theater World Award (1964-65) as one of the most promising personalities for “Wet Paint” and received plaudits for off-Broadway’s “The Mad Show,” which she left to take her current role. She has appeared on TV in “The Nurses and the Doctors” and hopes to appear in films some day.
But in the meanwhile she happily takes dictation at the desk next to SUPERMAN’S.

Calling Superman a “hit” was a bit premature. It ran for 129 performances on Broadway, though the musical was nominated for three Tonys and has been revived a number of times.

Lavin’s stage career carried on nonetheless. She was one of those people continually in demand, even at a time in life when age plays a factor in finding on-screen work. She was on a number of cable and streaming shows and most recently signed for the Hulu series Mid-Century Modern. Complications from lung cancer have claimed her at age 87.