Alice be Ghostly 1926 - 2007

O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones

Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,

And dallies with the innocence of love,

Like the old age.

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

So long Alice Ghostly, one of early television's great spinsters. Ghostly, along with other iconic single women of tv, Ann B. Davis, Nancy Kulp, and Sheila Kuehl, modeled the image of a single women for the Baby Boomers. It may not always have been pretty (Schultzy, Miss Hathaway) but it was THERE.

Alice was born on Aug. 14, 1926, in Eve, Mo., where her father worked as a telegraph operator. She grew up in Henryetta, Oklahoma. After graduating from high school, Ghostley attended the University of Oklahoma but dropped out and moved to New York with her sister to pursue a career in the theater.

"The best job I had then was as a theater usher," she said in a 1990 Boston Globe interview. "I saw the plays for free. What I saw before me was a visualization of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be."

She was well aware of the types of roles she should pursue. "I knew I didn't look like an ingenue," she told The Globe. "My nose was too long. I had crooked teeth. I wasn't blond. I knew I looked like a character actress.

"But I also knew I'd find a way," she added. And she did. And we remember her.

Thanks to cub reporter David Staskowski for contributing to this post.