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Lisa Aliff

American beauty pageant winner, former actress

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ62127969
Source-derived summary

Lisa Lynn Aliff Greenleaf (born September 10, 1960) is an American beauty pageant winner and former actress.

Early life, education, and career

Born in Roanoke, Virginia, Aliff attended Cave Spring High School. She graduated from college with a degree in early childhood education.

After being named Miss Roanoke Valley and being the runner-up in the 1981 Miss Virginia pageant, Aliff won the pageant in 1983. She then moved to Los Angeles and became an actress, appearing in a number of films and TV shows. Her first role was as Gail Kittredge on the TV show The Colbys, Season 1, Episode 24 "Checkmate" which aired on 22 May 1986. Over the next four years she also appeared in episodes of Cheers, Charles in Charge, Roomies, Valerie, Full House, Love and Betrayal, Who's the Boss?, Freddy's Nightmares, Dear John and Anything but Love. In 1986, she was cast as Alice Sycamore (née Vanderhof) in a starring role on You Can't Take It with You, a half-hour sitcom produced for syndication in 1986, but only four episodes of the show were aired.

In 1987, Aliff was the primary model for Sheer Indulgence pantyhose, appearing in two separate commercials which were broadcast nationally over the course of the next two years. The commercials were released upon the debut of the pantyhose, which were marketed as having department store quality but available in local markets at a lesser price.

Editorial summary

“Lisa Aliff” enters the record as american beauty pageant winner, former actress. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lisa, Aliff and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1960, 1981, 1983, 1986—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1960-09-10. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Lisa, Aliff and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Lisa Aliff” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lisa, Aliff and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62127969. VIAF identifies the subject as 61800503. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1981, 1983 and 1986.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lisa Aliff”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lisa Aliff primary sources, Lisa Aliff archive and Lisa research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lisa Aliff”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lisa Aliff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.