Alice Brock
Her mother, Mary Pelkey, was a Jewish native of Brooklyn;[5] her father, an Irish Catholic man,[6] was originally from Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
[7] By her teen years, she had taken an interest in left-wing politics,[10] and was registered with the Socialist Workers Party along with membership in the Students for a Democratic Society (as a founding member of that organization) and Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
[5] After leaving college, she spent a short period of time in Greenwich Village, where in 1960[5][9] she met, then married in 1962,[11] Ray Brock, a woodworker from Hartfield, Virginia who was over a decade older than Alice.
[5] With a gift from her mother, they purchased a deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, which the couple converted into a residence for themselves and a gathering place for friends and like-minded bohemians.
According to her, because she was now living her life as an independent woman and needed her own transportation to work the restaurant, Ray no longer had financial control over her—prior to this he had only allotted her a small allowance—which increased tension between the two.
[11] Contrary to an implication made in the film about The Back Room, Alice says that she was faithful to Ray throughout the marriage and was not promiscuous; she did not sleep with Guthrie, for example.
"[11] Brock closed the restaurant in April 1966[10] and moved to the Boston area with friends,[11] in addition to spending some time in Puerto Rico.
[5] She would return to Great Barrington and reconcile with Ray shortly thereafter, complete with a large hippie wedding that was written into the film, but the two would divorce permanently in 1968.
Brock earned almost nothing from her promotional work and was dismayed after learning that Arthur Penn, the film's director and co-writer, inserted fictional material into the story that she felt "misrepresented me, embarrassed me, and made me into an object."
[10] Brock attempted to start an Alice's Restaurant franchise in the late 1960s, but closed the first location in New York almost immediately when it failed a taste test.
By June 1970, officials in Lenox had rejected the proposal, fearing that the fame behind the name would draw excessive numbers of hippies and disturb the peace.
[6] The proceeds from the film and book sales (which netted $12,000 for her),[15] coupled with her decision to sell the church in 1971, freed up Brock's financial situation enough that she bought a former convenience store on Route 183 in Housatonic, Massachusetts, and converted it into Take-Out Alice, a walk-up food stand that, according to her, operated on the principle of serving "slow food, cooked fast," while maintaining some alcohol sales to maintain the site's liquor license.
[6] In contrast to her smaller, more intimate operations at the previous two restaurants, Alice's at Avaloch boasted a disco floor, swimming pool and a performance venue in addition to increased seating.
[15][6] By early 1978, Alice's at Avaloch was a substantial success that had made her wealthy, prompting her to display her wealth ostentatiously; an interview in The Washington Post remarked on the previously socialist Brock having suddenly turned more conservative.
[6] The location proved to be a major headache for Brock, as its infrastructure was not well-suited to an operation as large as the one she was running, at one point a severe snowstorm hit in the middle of spring, she had an admittedly "picky, petty" way of micromanaging the restaurant (continuing to make all the food from scratch even as the restaurant served hundreds of customers a day[6]) and she again ran afoul of local town officials.
[6] Alice's at Avaloch went out of business a year later,[15] she had gone into substantial debt and partnered with other investors on the venture and allowed her creditors to foreclose upon the property.
She spent most of the 1980s as a part-time prep cook for various restaurants in Provincetown[15] before leaving the labor force in part because of a diagnosis of emphysema in the 1990s.
[8] Smoking and alcohol dependency were Brock's two substantial vices; she was often visibly drunk during her time operating Alice's at Avaloch and would regularly down a pint of whiskey every evening during that era, commenting to The Washington Post that she never took hard drugs because "I can (dr)ink and (function normally) but I can't be stoned(.
[9] Dini Lamot and other friends in the music and arts communities organized fundraisers for her so that she could afford the approximately $60,000 per year she needed to remain in Provincetown.
[29] That same year, Brock recorded a custom series of introductions to "Alice's Restaurant" for stations that regularly play the song on Thanksgiving.
It was founded by Alice Taylor at the same time Brock opened up The Back Room, then converted into a tourist trap by subsequent owners capitalizing on the similarity in name (eventually adding a "Group W bench" in homage to the Guthrie song).
