Fannie Flagg

This red-haired stand-up comedienne and comedy actress honed her writing skills by creating her own original sketches, first as a determined contestant in the Miss Alabama contest (which she finally won on her sixth attempt) and later in comedy clubs. In the 1960s, Fannie Flagg (born Patricia Neal) was hired as a writer for Allen Funt's "Candid Camera" and later became a regular performer on that show and its 1970s revival as well as on "The New Dick Van Dyke Show" (CBS, 1971-73), as Van Dyke's manager and "Harper Valley P.T.A./Harper Valley" (NBC, 1981-82), as Barbara Eden's sidekick. She also appeared in the two-hour TV movie pilot for "Wonder Woman" (ABC, 1975) and was a constant presence on such TV game shows as "Password," "The Match Game" and "Liar's Club." Flagg made her film acting debut in "Five Easy Pieces" (1970), as the wife of Billy 'Green' Bush, and subsequently appeared in "Stay Hungry" (1975), "Rabbit Test" and "Grease" (both 1978). Having begun her career as a novelist with "Coming Attractions" (1981), Flagg wrote the popular "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe," published in 1987. In 1991, with the collaboration of screenwriter Carol Sobieski, she turned the novel into the film "Fried Green Tomatoes." A gently feminist portrait of two women bonding in the Depression-era rural South, the film (which excised the lesbian content of the book) was a huge popular hit and netted Flagg an Oscar nomination for her screenwriting debut. Her TV writing resumed in 1987 when her own Southern background helped Flagg write material for Dolly Parton's ABC variety series "Dolly."