Tony Award winning actress Linda Lavin died suddenly December 29, 2024 at the age of 87. While no official cause of death has been given; she had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer.
She was born October 15, 1937 in Portland, Maine; Lavin is the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. She began her acting career when she was just five years old. But it wasn’t until her appearance on Broadway in the sixties that she got her “big break”.
She made her Broadway debut in 1962 in the play “A Family Affair” where she portrayed several different roles. But her appearance in the musical “It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman” is where she not only originated the role of Sydney, she also sang “You’ve Got Possibilities” and in 1966 Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers wrote “The Boy From…” for Lavin in the musical “The Mad Show”.
A trip to Hollywood would launch a second career on the screen with a 1963 debut in “The Doctors and the Nurses” which led to a starring role in 1976 in the sitcom “Alice” about a waitress in a greasy-spoon diner with aspirations of becoming a singing star. It was Lavin herself who performed the show’s theme song.
Over the course of her career, Lavin appeared in nearly three dozen Broadway productions and dozens of films and television appearances.
Lavin’s Broadway appearances include “Last of the Red Hot Lovers”, “Broadway Bound”, “Gypsy”, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, and her final role in 2016 in “Our Mother’s Brief Affair”.
While she is best known for her role in “Alice”, Lavin appeared in dozens of productions including the film “Damn Yankees”, “Rhoda”, “Barney Miller”, “The Muppets Take Manhattan”, “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story”, “Touched by an Angel”, “The Sopranos”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, “The Good Wife”, “Bob’s Burgers”, “Elsbeth”, and her final role in “One Big Happy Family”.
Along with her Tony Award for Best Actress in “Broadway Bound”; she earned two Golden Globe Awards, two Obie Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, A Theatre World Award, and two Drama Desk Awards.
She is survived by her third husband Steve Bakunas, stepchildren, and grandchildren.