Beth Howland 

Beth Howland will best be remembered for her role as Vera Louise Gorman on the CBS sitcom ‘Alice’ during the 1970s and ’80s. As a child she studied dance and after graduating from high school at 16, she headed to New York where she landed roles on stage in such Broadway productions as ‘Once Upon a Mattress’, ‘Bye Bye Birdie’, ‘Your Own Thing’ and ‘Company’. Beth Howland also appeared as a dancer in the 1959 film ‘Li’l Abner’. After being cast on an episode of ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’, she moved to Los Angeles to work in television and appeared on ‘Love, American Style’, ‘Cannon’, ‘The Rookies’ and other shows.  When Warner Bros. Television began casting roles for ‘Alice’, which required three waitresses for Mel’s Diner, Howland landed the role of Vera, the high-strung, ditsy, accident-prone waitress starring alongside Linda Lavin, Vic Tayback and Polly Holliday. Howland played the character for nine seasons, from 1976 to 1985, earning four Emmy nominations along the way. After the series went off the air, she had guest roles on several TV shows, including ‘Eight Is Enough’, ‘Little House on the Prairie’, ‘Murder, She Wrote’, ‘Sabrina, the Teenage Witch’ and ‘The Tick’. She and actress Jennifer Warren were the executive producers of the documentary ‘You Don’t Have to Die’, which won an Academy Award in 1989 for best short-subject documentary. Beth Howland, who died of lung cancer, requested that her husband, actor Charles Kimbrough, refrain from announcing her death, adding that she had not wanted a funeral or a memorial service. (bio by: Louis M.)