This month we are celebrating some of our favorite Supportive Men, actors who usually are not the star of a show but add the special flavor only they can to some of our favorite shows.

Before we move on to our topic today, can I just say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who have joined me on this journey through classic television. Today is my 400th blog and it has been so much fun. Next week will be 401, but for today we are looking at the career of Vic Tayback.

Most of us probably know him best as Mel on Alice; he played Mel Sharples in both the original movie, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, as well as the television show that was on for nine years.

Tayback was born in Brooklyn in 1930. His parents settled there after leaving Aleppo, Syria. During his teenage years, the family moved to California where he attended Burbank High School. He loved sports and played on a variety of teams, his favorite being football.

After high school, he enrolled at Glendale Community College. He also spent some time with the US Navy.

With his love of sports, he decided to attend the Frederick A. Speare School of Radio and TV Broadcasting to be a sports broadcaster. While there he was required to perform in a production of “Stalag 17” for one of his classes. He wasn’t thrilled about doing so, but he realized that he loved making people laugh and decided to switch his career to acting. While trying to break into the industry, he paid his dues driving a cab and working as a bank teller.

The first of Tayback’s astounding 151 acting credits occurred in 1958 in a little-remembered series, Buckskin. This western was set in Annie O’Connell’s boarding house in Buckskin, Montana in 1880 and the stories were told by ten-year-old Jody. Vic continued to receive a few other appearances on television in the late fifties, as well as two films.

In the sixties, Tayback’s career took off. He would show up on 32 television episodes and 9 big-screen films, including With Six You Get Eggroll with Doris Day and Brian Keith. His tv roles were in comedies such as F-Troop, I Dream of Jeannie, Family Affair, Get Smart, The Monkees, and That Girl. He also could be seen in a variety of dramas that included 77 Sunset Strip, Dr. Kildare, Rawhide, Cimarron Strip, Star Trek, and Mission Impossible.

The sixties also found Vic in the role of groom. In 1963, Tayback married Sheila Barnard, and they remained married until his death.

During the seventies, his appearances escalated to more than forty television series and ten movies. Some of his television shows included Bonanza, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bewitched, Columbo, Mannix, Ironside, Mod Squad, The Partridge Family, All in the Family, Barney Miller, Cannon, Medical Center, Family, and Hawaii Five-0. His movies included a few genres running from Disney’s The Shaggy DA to Papillon (Papillon was the story of a French convict who befriends a fellow criminal in South America in the 1930s, and he plans an escape).

It was during the mid-seventies that he was offered the role of Mel Sharples. In 1974 the movie was released, and the television show aired in 1976. The show was very popular with viewers. Vic said he and Mel were somewhat similar characters. While people still quote Flo on the show with her “Kiss my grits,” Tayback had his own tagline on the show, “Stow it.”

If you didn’t see the show, it featured a greasy-spoon diner in Phoenix, Arizona. Alice moves there after the death of her husband with her son Tommy. She becomes a waitress at Mel’s along with sassy Flo and shy, gullible Vera. Despite the bad food, they have a lot of regulars who come in for a meal. If you want to visit the restaurant, the building it was based on is at 1747 NW Grand Ave in Phoenix and was called Pat’s Family Restaurant. (It was also featured in American Graffiti.) It is now called Mel’s Diner. According to Trip Advisor, it is ranked #448 out of 1795 restaurants in Phoenix.

The role of Mel won Tayback Golden Globe awards in both 1979 and 1980. In 1978 he was nominated for an Emmy as Supporting Actor in a Comedy. While he did not win, he was in some amazing company. That year, fellow nominees included Harry Morgan and Gary Burghoff for M*A*S*H, Tom Bosley in Happy Days, and Rob Reiner from All in the Family, who took home the win that year.

The series aired on Saturday nights and the first year was in the top thirty. In 1977, its second season, it was moved to Sunday nights, following All in the Family where it rose into the top ten. In 1979, All in the Family left the airwaves, and Alice then followed One Day at a Time. Seasons three-five, it continued to be in the top thirty. In 1981, the show was moved to Monday nights up against M*A*S*H where it fell out of the top 30. However, season seven found it back on Sundays following The Jeffersons where it rose back into the top thirty. However, it took another dive in ratings the next year and then was cancelled. I think it probably stayed on the air a year or two beyond when it should have. However, interestingly enough, the year it was cancelled, CBS introduced 15 new shows. I’m not sure most people have ever heard of any of them; they were all gone by 1986 with the exception of The Twilight Zone (reboot) and West 57^th, which was a news show aimed at younger audiences.

Vic was also an avid horse-racing fan and owned quite a few thoroughbreds. On Alice, Mel was also a track fan, and sometimes the writers asked Mel for names of horses they could use, and he often gave them names of his horses.

On the show, Vic was often made fun of for his bad cooking. In a 1985 interview he said, “If I walked into a restaurant, the other diners would look around and say, ‘I hope you’re not cooking.’” Heinz then offered him the role of spokesperson for their Heniz 57 sauce and his line in the commercials, was “I used to be a lousy cook.” He was also remembered for an Aqua Velva commercial he did with Pete Rose.

Unfortunately, Tayback was a heavy smoker which caused heart trouble for him. While doing Alice, he had a triple-bypass surgery. While he did try to quit numerous times, he just could never kick the habit. In 1990, he died from a heart attack at age 60.

While we were cheated of several decades of performances from Vic with his early death, he did leave an amazing legacy in the Company of Angels theater in Los Angeles. According to its website, “In 1959, a group of actors, including Tayback, Leonard Nimoy, Richard Chamberlin, and Vic Morrow founded the theater to provide a space for actors and other theater artists to work on their craft free of commercial constraints.”

Thank you, Vic Tayback, for deciding to make people laugh in your career and investing in the future of acting so those memories continue in the future.