Linda Lavin, star of sitcom "Alice" and Tony Award winner, dies at 87

Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actress who became a working class icon as a paper-hat wearing waitress on the TV sitcom "Alice," has died. She was 87.

Lavin died unexpectedly Sunday of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, her representative, Michael Gagliardo, told CBS News in an email.

A success on Broadway, Lavin tried her luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," the Martin Scorsese-directed film that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for playing the title waitress.