FLO article in TV Guide NOV. 8-14 1980

[JeffRuss1972]

The following is an article I got from a November 1980 TV Guide. Thought you might find it interesting.

Title:
"Polly Holliday got where she is by being . . .
BRAZEN AND BRAINY"
_____________________________________________________________
By Bill Davidson

Where else but in the crazy world of television could you spin off a show called FLO from a three-year hit called ALICE----and in the very first week see FLO, the offspring turn up as No. 1 in the ratings, with the parent, ALICE, in eighth place?
One reason for this phenomenon is that CBS positioned FLO just after M*A*S*H on Monday night. As FLO's executive producer, Jim Mulligan, candidly put it, "You could put Bugs Bunny reruns in the time slot following M*A*S*H and still get a 34-per-cent share." But FLO was tied with M*A*S*H itself that first week, and made it a very close contest in the succeeding weeks. How do you account for THAT? "Simple," says Mulligan, who, as it happens, came to FLO directly from M*A*S*H. "It's mostly because of Polly Holliday. She's the Alan Alda of this outfit."
That may be an overstatement, considering that Alda generally is considered the top triple-threat player in the TV game today---with skills as a writer, producer and director as well as a take-charge actor. It also should be noted that Alda was a well-known and accomplished stage and screen personality long before he took on the persona of Hawkeye Pierce in the celebrated Korean War field hospital.

The tall and 40ish Miss Holliday, on the other hand, languished as a piano teacher in Haleyville, Ala., before doing seven years of repertory on the stage of the Asolo State Theatre in Sarasota, Fla. Then came supporting parts in such films as "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings" and "The One and Only". It was only with the emergence of her red-haired, rambunctious Flo-the-waitress character in ALICE (and Flo's "Kiss mah grits!" war cry) that Polly finally was able to say, "I passed a milestone today. The saleswoman actually recognized me in Saks Fifth Avenue."
And yet there ARE striking similarities between Alan on his show and Polly on hers. Producer Mulligan says, "She sits in on all our story conferences and I treat her like all the other writers. When we rehearse and tape, it's as if I had a second director on the floor. She was responsible for all our casting---coming up with people like Lucy Lee Flippin and Leo Burmester, whom she knew from her regional-theater days. When I was offered this job, I insisted on a full working relationship with Polly because she knows the character Flo better than anyone in the world."

Joyce Bulifant (who plays Miriam in the series) is even more vociferous about Polly's role in the order of things on FLO. "It's Polly's show," she says. "If something upsets her, she speaks up. Nine times out of 10 she's right, and she gets her way. She's got the brazenness and the talent to pull it off, which is why she literally bulled this series through Warner Brothers, CBS and everyone else."
Despite the extravagance of some of these statements, it doubtless is true that Polly is more responsible than anyone else for getting FLO on the air. It began with a sequence of seemingly unrelated events, starting in 1972.
In that year, Polly came to New York from Asolo Theater in Florida---as she frequently did between Asolo seasons--- to study drama and look for work. She went to an open casting call for the part of a repressed opera singer in an upcoming Broadway play by Murray Schisgal called "All over Town." She got the part. The play's director was Dustin Hoffman. As the show's run ended in 1975, Hoffman told Polly, "I'll see you in Hollywood. You'll end up there because you're as mean as I am."
Nine months later she received a call from Hoffman in Los Angeles. He got her a short but pithy role as an obstreperous receptionist in "All the President's Men." The casting consultant for the film happened to be Alan Shayne, and soon thereafter, Shayne became president of Warner Bros. Television programming. One of his first projects was the ALICE series, based on the 1974 hit movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Shayne remembered Polly from "All the President's Men." Polly auditioned and got the part of Flo in support of Linda Lavin's Alice.

That's when the wheeling and dealing began, along with the final emergence of Polly Holliday. Says Polly: "From the very beginning, the studio seemed to have grave doubts as to whether ALICE could make it. For most of the first season, the show was just sort of hanging in there. The ratings began to pick up only when the audience discovered us during the first summer's reruns. In the meantime, Warner Brothers kept talking to me about 'when we spin off FLO.' It was not IF, but WHEN."
It is evident, therefore, that in the convoluted way of TV-executive thinking, ALICE began with the forethought that an early salvage operation might be needed---and that Flo, as a character, might be better suited to today's situation-comedy tastes.
"The only problem," says Polly, "was that Flo really wasn't a character---yet. I deliberately had avoided going to see the movie 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore' because I didn't want to be influenced by what Diane Ladd had done in the picture. Instead, I resorted to what I call 'puzzle-solving.' It's a technique I've used since my drama-student days at Alabama College at Montevallo and Florida State University. I take the dialogue the writer has written on the page, and then I use my imagination to construct an entire background for the character---from birth to the present. I write it all down, as if I'm doing a novel."
***TO BE CONTINUED LATER IN ANOTHER THREAD * * *

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by JeffRuss1972

The following is an article I got from a November 1980 TV Guide. Thought you might find it interesting.

Title:
"Polly Holliday got where she is by being . . .
BRAZEN AND BRAINY"
_____________________________________________________________
By Bill Davidson

Where else but in the crazy world of television could you spin off a show called FLO from a three-year hit called ALICE----and in the very first week see FLO, the offspring turn up as No. 1 in the ratings, with the parent, ALICE, in eighth place?
One reason for this phenomenon is that CBS positioned FLO just after M*A*S*H on Monday night. As FLO's executive producer, Jim Mulligan, candidly put it, "You could put Bugs Bunny reruns in the time slot following M*A*S*H and still get a 34-per-cent share." But FLO was tied with M*A*S*H itself that first week, and made it a very close contest in the succeeding weeks. How do you account for THAT? "Simple," says Mulligan, who, as it happens, came to FLO directly from M*A*S*H. "It's mostly because of Polly Holliday. She's the Alan Alda of this outfit."
That may be an overstatement, considering that Alda generally is considered the top triple-threat player in the TV game today---with skills as a writer, producer and director as well as a take-charge actor. It also should be noted that Alda was a well-known and accomplished stage and screen personality long before he took on the persona of Hawkeye Pierce in the celebrated Korean War field hospital.

The tall and 40ish Miss Holliday, on the other hand, languished as a piano teacher in Haleyville, Ala., before doing seven years of repertory on the stage of the Asolo State Theatre in Sarasota, Fla. Then came supporting parts in such films as "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings" and "The One and Only". It was only with the emergence of her red-haired, rambunctious Flo-the-waitress character in ALICE (and Flo's "Kiss mah grits!" war cry) that Polly finally was able to say, "I passed a milestone today. The saleswoman actually recognized me in Saks Fifth Avenue."
And yet there ARE striking similarities between Alan on his show and Polly on hers. Producer Mulligan says, "She sits in on all our story conferences and I treat her like all the other writers. When we rehearse and tape, it's as if I had a second director on the floor. She was responsible for all our casting---coming up with people like Lucy Lee Flippin and Leo Burmester, whom she knew from her regional-theater days. When I was offered this job, I insisted on a full working relationship with Polly because she knows the character Flo better than anyone in the world."

Joyce Bulifant (who plays Miriam in the series) is even more vociferous about Polly's role in the order of things on FLO. "It's Polly's show," she says. "If something upsets her, she speaks up. Nine times out of 10 she's right, and she gets her way. She's got the brazenness and the talent to pull it off, which is why she literally bulled this series through Warner Brothers, CBS and everyone else."
Despite the extravagance of some of these statements, it doubtless is true that Polly is more responsible than anyone else for getting FLO on the air. It began with a sequence of seemingly unrelated events, starting in 1972.
In that year, Polly came to New York from Asolo Theater in Florida---as she frequently did between Asolo seasons--- to study drama and look for work. She went to an open casting call for the part of a repressed opera singer in an upcoming Broadway play by Murray Schisgal called "All over Town." She got the part. The play's director was Dustin Hoffman. As the show's run ended in 1975, Hoffman told Polly, "I'll see you in Hollywood. You'll end up there because you're as mean as I am."
Nine months later she received a call from Hoffman in Los Angeles. He got her a short but pithy role as an obstreperous receptionist in "All the President's Men." The casting consultant for the film happened to be Alan Shayne, and soon thereafter, Shayne became president of Warner Bros. Television programming. One of his first projects was the ALICE series, based on the 1974 hit movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Shayne remembered Polly from "All the President's Men." Polly auditioned and got the part of Flo in support of Linda Lavin's Alice.

That's when the wheeling and dealing began, along with the final emergence of Polly Holliday. Says Polly: "From the very beginning, the studio seemed to have grave doubts as to whether ALICE could make it. For most of the first season, the show was just sort of hanging in there. The ratings began to pick up only when the audience discovered us during the first summer's reruns. In the meantime, Warner Brothers kept talking to me about 'when we spin off FLO.' It was not IF, but WHEN."
It is evident, therefore, that in the convoluted way of TV-executive thinking, ALICE began with the forethought that an early salvage operation might be needed---and that Flo, as a character, might be better suited to today's situation-comedy tastes.
"The only problem," says Polly, "was that Flo really wasn't a character---yet. I deliberately had avoided going to see the movie 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore' because I didn't want to be influenced by what Diane Ladd had done in the picture. Instead, I resorted to what I call 'puzzle-solving.' It's a technique I've used since my drama-student days at Alabama College at Montevallo and Florida State University. I take the dialogue the writer has written on the page, and then I use my imagination to construct an entire background for the character---from birth to the present. I write it all down, as if I'm doing a novel."
***TO BE CONTINUED LATER* * *

I have this Article but since I don;t have a computer I'm unable to post it on here-lol

[JeffRuss1972]

Yeah, I had the WHOLE article typed out, but LOST half of it, so I'll have to continue in another thread later-lol.