Alice also performed on the stage, and received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her appearance in the 1987 production of August Wilson's Fences.

[6] Mary Alice returned to acting in the mid-1960s through community theater and appeared in three Douglass Turner Ward's plays, including Days of Absence and Happy Endings.

[7] She did some acting in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s, performing in multiple productions at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in Manhattan's East Village between 1969 and 1973.

[13] Mary Alice made her screen début in the 1974 film The Education of Sonny Carson, and later appeared in the television shows Police Woman and Sanford and Son.

She played Ellie Grant Hubbard on the soap opera All My Children during the mid-1980s, and the role of Cora in Stan Lathan's 1984 cult-classic Beat Street, as well as co–starred in A Different World as Leticia 'Lettie' Bostic from the series' start in 1987 until the end of the second season in 1989.