View Full Version : Intimate Portrait with Linda Lavin


chrisgill@aol.com
09-06-2003, 01:54 PM
Hi!

I watched Philip McKeon on Intimate Portrait on Lifetime. Who else were in Intimate Portrait?



Holly:wave:

Scoobiedoo30
07-09-2007, 02:17 PM
I wish I could see it Again but we do not get Lifetime move Network anymore

cavalier
07-11-2007, 02:15 PM
What did Philip say about being on Alice and working w/her?

TALLguyinKY
08-28-2007, 12:21 AM
I saw it the other night. Wow...the Alice segments were about how wonderful, groundbreaking, hilarious, and loved Alice was. Like it was a classic of television. Sure I enjoyed the reruns for nostalgia, but I found that for myself the show wasn't that great as I'd remembered as a kid. It's pretty bad when your lead character becomes uninteresting by the second season and completely overshadowed by the third.

I noticed Linda didn't happen to mention her mostrous inflated ego which shoved Polly out of the show. :rolleyes: In fact she got the info wrong, she just briefly mentioned Polly when she discussed cast changes, and she said, "We had Polly Holliday as Flo for...2 years, then she left to do her spin-off" (she just casually said it like it was so natural---yeah, right! [and never mind Polly was on for about 3 1/2 years, not just 2!]), "then we had Diane Ladd, and then I think in season 4 we had this terrific actress named Celia Weston come in, and she stayed till the end."

Uh-huh.

catlover79
08-28-2007, 12:41 AM
I've said it before and will say it again (and Garfieldkool will concur): Vic Tayback was the REAL star of Alice. From everything I've read, he was warm, friendly, easygoing and wonderful to his fans (he even signed "stow it!" in his autographs - :lol:). He won several Golden Globes for his role, as did LL - but she seems to have had MAJOR ego issues. She had the least interesting role and she was the lead! :eek: I did like LL as Janice Wentworth on Barney Miller, however (especially in the episode "Hotel").

TALLguyinKY
08-28-2007, 12:59 AM
He won several Golden Globes for his role, as did LL

And Polly won 2. :)

comedyfreak
08-28-2007, 08:52 AM
I've said it before and will say it again (and Garfieldkool will concur): Vic Tayback was the REAL star of Alice. From everything I've read, he was warm, friendly, easygoing and wonderful to his fans (he even signed "stow it!" in his autographs - :lol:). He won several Golden Globes for his role, as did LL - but she seems to have had MAJOR ego issues.
I read somewhere that Vic was wanting a come back when he died.

mstewart
08-28-2007, 09:46 AM
I saw it the other night. Wow...the Alice segments were about how wonderful, groundbreaking, hilarious, and loved Alice was. Like it was a classic of television. Sure I enjoyed the reruns for nostalgia, but I found that for myself the show wasn't that great as I'd remembered as a kid. It's pretty bad when your lead character becomes uninteresting by the second season and completely overshadowed by the third.

I noticed Linda didn't happen to mention her mostrous inflated ego which shoved Polly out of the show. :rolleyes: In fact she got the info wrong, she just briefly mentioned Polly when she discussed cast changes, and she said, "We had Polly Holliday as Flo for...2 years, then she left to do her spin-off" (she just casually said it like it was so natural---yeah, right! [and never mind Polly was on for about 3 1/2 years, not just 2!]), "then we had Diane Ladd, and then I think in season 4 we had this terrific actress named Celia Weston come in, and she stayed till the end."

Uh-huh.

If Linda said that she was lying. Her and Polly did not get along and you can see it in season 4 by the way Linda interacted with her onscreen. In the first two seasons you can see the warmth between them. When the show took off in season 3, the best one, that was when Polly took off as Flo. The tension began because many was calling it Flo's show. There were a couple of episodes in season 4, Polly's final one on the show, you can sense the tension between them.

When Diane Ladd came on board the tension between them was there immediately. Linda saw her as a threat. Diane was good in that role. I love her little voice trademark. Diane stated that her experience on Alice was hard and she went to CBS wanting out. That was why she left in the middle of the season.

Celia Weston, on the other hand, was not good and brought the show down. I did not care for Jolene. She was not funny except her first episode when she threw those plates at her former truck driver partner. I was screaming on that one.

Alice was more of an ensemble show, in the vein of Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke and Barney Miller, with Linda Lavin as the star and the centerpiece of the show. It was too bad that ego and power got in the way of a show that had the potential of going down as a classic. Also, the show stayed on too long and by season 6 it was stale and tired. From season 7 to its final it became unwatchable. Especially season 8 and 9.

TALLguyinKY
08-28-2007, 07:00 PM
I agree mstewart---in a way I couldn't believe she glossed over everything like that and mentioned the cast changes so casually as if she were repeating what she had for lunch. But considering that most of the fans know about the tension and power trips and stuff---and others like Polly have alluded to it or mentioned it interviewes--it's just amazing that Lavin glossed over it, and that the interview didn't reference it at all.

mstewart
08-28-2007, 11:32 PM
I agree mstewart---in a way I couldn't believe she glossed over everything like that and mentioned the cast changes so casually as if she were repeating what she had for lunch. But considering that most of the fans know about the tension and power trips and stuff---and others like Polly have alluded to it or mentioned it interviewes--it's just amazing that Lavin glossed over it, and that the interview didn't reference it at all.
So did Diane Ladd mentioned in interviews how rough that experience on Alice was.

TALLguyinKY
08-29-2007, 07:03 PM
She wasn't interviewed for this---neither were Polly (surprise, surprise) or Beth.

But Celia was...imagine that.

catlover79
08-29-2007, 11:52 PM
I thought LL and Beth Howland were pretty tight while the show was on the air. Whatever happened to Beth Howland post-Alice, anyway??

mstewart
08-30-2007, 12:23 AM
I thought LL and Beth Howland were pretty tight while the show was on the air. Whatever happened to Beth Howland post-Alice, anyway??
Beth was not a threat to Linda.