A stage and TV actress with some feature credits, Mary Alice is known for playing women of quiet dignity and strength and for her eyes which speak a thousand words. TV viewers have known her as Fred Sanford's nemesis sister-in-law on episodes of "Sanford and Son" (NBC, 1975), and as the housemother with a past on "A Different World" (NBC, 1988-89). But anyone who has seen her playing wife of James Earl Jones and mother to Courtney Vance in her Tony-winning role in "Fences" (1987; also on tour) or as the sassy sister in "Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years" (1995) on Broadway knows that Alice is a resource never properly cultivated by Hollywood.