LOS ANGELES – Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actress who became a working-class icon as a paper-hatted waitress on the TV sitcom “Alice,” has died. She was 87.

Lavin died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her representative Bill Veloric told The Associated Press in an email.

Lavin was successful on Broadway and tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She has been tapped 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 titular waitress.

The title was shortened to “Alice” and Lavin became a role model for working mothers as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son who works at a roadside restaurant outside of Phoenix. The show, in which Lavin sang the theme song “There’s a New Girl in Town,” ran from 1976 to 1985.

The show made “Kiss my grits” a catchphrase and starred Polly Holliday as waitress Flo and Vic Tayback as the gruff owner and chef of Mel’s Diner.

The series bounced around the CBS schedule for its first two seasons, but became a hit on Sunday nights in October 1977, leading to “All in the Family.” It was among the top 10 primetime shows in four of the next five seasons. Variety magazine named the film one of the best workplace comedies of all time.

Lavin soon won a Tony for best actress in a play in 1987 for Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound.

According to Deadline, which first reported her death, later this month she was working on promoting a new Netflix series “No Good Deed,” in which she appears, and filming an upcoming Hulu series “Mid-Century Modern.” “.

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 show ensembles.

Legendary producer and director Hal Prince gave Lavin her first big break when she directed the Broadway musical “It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman.” In 1969, she received a Tony nomination for Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” before winning 18 years later for another Simon play, “Broadway Bound.”

In the mid-1970s, Lavin moved to Los Angeles. She had a recurring role on Barney Miller and was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom in 1976 based on Ellen Burstyn’s Oscar-winning waitress comedy Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

Back on Broadway, Lavin later starred in Paul Rudnick’s comedy The New Century and had a concert show called Songs. & Confessions of a One-Time Waitress” and received a Tony nomination for Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories.”

The AP’s Michael Kuchwara praised Lavin in “Collected Stories,” writing that she “gives one of those complete, nuanced performances that captures the woman’s intellectual power, her wry sense of humor and her increasing physical frailty with astonishing fidelity.” And Lavin’s.” Her sense of timing is excellent, whether she’s telling a joke or bitingly analyzing her protégé’s work.”

Lavin enjoyed a new burst of fame in her 70s, earning a Tony nomination for Nicky Silver’s The Lyons. She also starred in Other Desert Cities and a revival of Follies before it moved to Broadway.

The AP once again raved about Lavin in “The Lyons,” calling her “an absolute wonder to watch as Rita Lyons, a whiner of a mother with a collection of strong convictions and eye-rolls, a matriarch who is both suffocating and keeping everyone at arm’s length.” Length.”

She also appeared in the film “Wanderlust” with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd and released her first CD, “Possibilities.” She played Jennifer Lopez’s grandmother in The Back-Up Plan.

When asked for advice by aspiring actresses, Lavin emphasized one thing. “I say what happened for me is that work brings work. As long as it wasn’t morally reprehensible to me, I did it,” she told the AP in 2011.

She and Steve Bakunas, an artist, musician and her third husband, converted an old auto repair shop into the 50-seat Red Barn Studio Theater in Wilmington, North Carolina.

It opened in 2007 and its productions include “Doubt” by John Patrick Shanley, “Glengarry Glen Ross” by David Mamet, “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire and “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” by Charles Busch, in which Lavin also starred on Broadway and received a Tony nomination.

In 2013, she returned to television with Will in Sean Saves the World & Grace’s “Sean Hayes”, a show that lasted one season. Lavin also appeared in “Mom” and “9JKL.”