The actress who popularized the line “Kiss my grits!” has died.
Polly Holliday was 88 years old.
Holliday’s friend and manager Dennis Aspland confirmed her death, but did not provide a cause, The Washington Post reported. She died at home in New York on Sept. 9, CBS News reported.
Holliday was born Polly Dean Holliday in Jasper, Alabama, in 1937.
She was 9 years old when her parents divorced and she and her mother moved to Childersburg, Alabama.
Holliday attended an Alabama state college for women, now called the University of Montevallo, where she appeared on stage.
“A drama teacher saw me and thought I had real flair. And, secretly, so did I,” she said in 1980. “When I was acting, I forgot all the loneliness I’d known as a child. The inferiority complex I had about not having as much as other kids, or not being popular with boys, just vanished. … I wasn’t even invited to the prom. But later, when acting took hold of me, none of that mattered anymore.”
She earned a bachelor’s degree in piano, eventually teaching music in public schools and acting with a repertory theater company for about a decade.
In 1974, she hit Broadway, appearing in “All Over Town,” which happened to be directed by Dustin Hoffman. He recommended her for the small role of a hostile receptionist in “All the President’s Men.”
The film’s casting director also worked on the show “Alice,” and suggested that Holliday audition, specifically for the Florence Jean Castleberry role.
“She’s not like me, and I feel I know her,” she had said, according to The Washington Post. “My father was a truck driver for a lumber company. Often I’d go with him on trips, and, stopping at diners and truck stops, I met a lot of women like Flo. They’d usually had a pretty tough life and, as a result, had learned to protect themselves with a sense of humor that could stop people in their tracks — laughing.”
Instead of hiding her Southern twang, she embraced it in the show that started airing in 1976 and inspired a short-lived spinoff in 1980.
Over the original show’s run, Holliday had three Emmy nominations for best supporting actress. She also won a Golden Globe twice, Variety reported.
Holliday also appeared in “Gremlins,” “Parent Trap,” “The Golden Girls,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and “Home Improvement,” according to IMDB.
She also helped Hoffman as an uncredited acting and dialogue coach in his role in “Tootsie.”
Holliday also went back to the stage, starring opposite Jean Stapleton in a revival of “Arsenic and Old Lace” in 1986 and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with Charles Durning and Kathleen Turner in 1990. Holiday was nominated for a Tony for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” according to Variety. She was last on stage in “Picnic” in 1994, the Post reported.
She never married and said that she liked the freedom in her personal and professional life.
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