From the
New York Times:
Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on ''Bewitched'' and Bernice on ''Designing Women,'' has died. She was 81.
[...]
In the 1960s, Ghostley received a Tony nomination for various characterizations in the Broadway comedy ''The Beauty Part'' and eventually won for best featured actress in ''The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.''
From 1969 to 1972, she played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's ''Bewitched.'' She played Bernice Clifton on ''Designing Women'' from 1987 to 1993, for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 1992.
She proved that character actors are often the best part of a production, as this quote from
Designing Women illustrates:
[Their Yuletide Homes design has been stolen]
Bernice: Well, I think we should get some bricks and some baseball bats and go over there and teach them the TRUE meaning of Christmas.
Thanks, Alice, for a lifetime of laughs.
