She was not on the list.
In 1952, Jayne Meadows was a broke, newly divorced film
actress when she got a job she didn't really want. It ended up making her a
household name.
On the game show "I've Got a Secret," Meadows
joined a panel of four celebrities who were supposed to guess a funny or
embarrassing hidden fact about guests. Throughout the 1950s it was one of the
highest-rated shows in the fast-growing medium of television.
"The thing that made me a name in television was not
acting — it was that show," Meadows recalled later.
Her work on "I've Got a Secret" also introduced
her to the man who became her second husband, Steve Allen, who was the first
host of NBC's "Tonight Show." Until his death in 2000, they were one
of the most recognizable performing couples in Hollywood.
Meadows died of natural causes Sunday night at her home in Encino,
according to her son Bill Allen. She was 95.
Long after ending her run on "I've Got a Secret,"
Meadows kept hunting for film and TV roles, occasionally landing some that
earned her attention. Younger filmgoers may recall her as Billy Crystal's
mother in "City Slickers." She also had a regular role as a nurse on
the 1970s drama "Medical Center" and appeared on another classic game
show, "What's My Line?"
Meadows was nominated three times for prime-time Emmy Awards
for her series work, including once on her husband's PBS series, "Meeting
of Minds," in which she played historical figures such as Cleopatra and
Florence Nightingale.
But her longest-running role was as part of a celebrity
couple representing the virtues of comfortable domestic life amid the chaotic
swirl of show business. Meadows assumed the part of the chatty, fashionable
partner to Allen's tireless Renaissance man.
She was a bright, warm and charming lady. Always ready with
a big smile and a funny story. Steve Allen was very lucky to find her.
During a 1981 joint interview, a reporter asked whether
Meadows had felt a recent minor earthquake in Los Angeles. She replied that her
husband had but that she had not.
"She was talking at the time," Allen deadpanned.
Jayne Meadows Cotter was born Sept. 27, 1919, to parents
serving as Episcopal missionaries in Wuchang, China. (She often misstated her
age by three to 10 years, but, according to her son, was so pleased at reaching
90 a few years ago that she produced a birth certificate that corrected the
record.)
Young Jayne was not a fan of her birth country, at least at
first.
"I remember mostly fearful things," she recalled
of China in a 1979 interview. "The noise. Riding in a rickshaw with my
older brothers to school and having hats stolen right off my head in the
street."
But after Communist leaders began opening up China in the
1970s, she revisited the country with Allen and film groups, and gave talks to
young Chinese actors who were curious about America.
By the 1930s, the family was back in the U.S. and Meadows
was set on a career as a performer. Her younger sister, Audrey Meadows, would
eventually rise to fame as Ralph Kramden's long-suffering wife on Jackie
Gleason's seminal 1950s TV comedy "The Honeymooners."
Jayne Meadows made her Broadway debut in the comedy
"Spring Again" in 1941. After World War II, she moved to Hollywood
and earned some positive notices opposite Katharine Hepburn in the 1946 film
noir "Undercurrent," directed by Vincente Minnelli. She followed up
the next year with another acclaimed supporting role, this time in the
adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "Lady in the Lake."
But her film career fizzled, as did a first marriage to
screenwriter Milton Krims.
On "I've Got a Secret," Meadows finally found her
metier as part of a group of bright lights who could help turn a formulaic game
show into a party that viewers were eager to attend.
Later in life, she was irked by the frustrations of trying
to make a living as an actor. "The roles for women are very limited,"
she said in 1977.
But she found a refuge in her family. In addition to her son
Bill, she is survived by three grandchildren.
"She's an old-fashioned woman," Allen once said of
his wife. "Old-fashioned in terms of her attitudes, her manner, her
demeanor, her voice. She has a dignity that is rare these days. But she also
has a lightness, an airiness, a girlishness and a certain degree of social
innocence."
Film and television appearances
1946: Undercurrent
as Sylvia Lea Burton
1946: Lady in the
Lake as Mildred Havelend
1947: Dark
Delusion as Mrs. Selkirk
1947: Song of the
Thin Man as Janet Thayar
1948: The Luck of
the Irish as Frances Augur
1948: Enchantment
as Selina Dane
1951: The Fat Man
as Jane Adams
1951: David and
Bathsheba as Michal
1952: Robert
Montgomery Presents (TV Series)
1952: Woman with a
Sword (TV Movie) as Anna Ella Carroll
1952: Pulitzer
Prize Playhouse (TV Series)
1952: Kraft
Theatre (TV Series)
1952–1953: Danger
(TV Series)
1953: Suspense (TV
Series) as Helen Brady
1953: The Web (TV
Series)
1954: Ponds
Theater (TV Series)
1955: The United
States Steel Hour (TV Series) as Cora
1955: Jane Wyman
Presents The Fireside Theatre (TV Series) as Alice
1956: Studio One
in Hollywood (TV Series) as Leslie
1957–1963: The Red
Skelton Hour (TV Series) as Mrs. Cavendish / Gloria Dalton / Ruby / Ruthie /
Clem's Greedy Relative
1959: It Happened
to Jane as Herself
1959: The Ann
Sothern Show (TV Series) as Liza Vincent
1960: College Confidential
as Betty Duquesne
1960: General
Electric Theater (TV Series) as Jean Fletcher
1962: The DuPont
Show of the Week (TV Series) as Myra
1964: The Eleventh
Hour (TV Series) as Mrs. Bredan
1968: Good Morning
World (TV Series) as Mary Margaret
1968: Now You See
It, Now You Don't (TV Movie) as Ida
1969: The Outsider
(TV Series) as Lil
1969: Here Come
the Brides (TV Series) as Eleanor Tangiers
1969–1972: Medical
Center (TV Series) as Nurse Chambers
1970: Love,
American Style (TV Series) as Tana Wright (segment "Love and the Many
Married Couple")
1970: Here's Lucy
(TV Series) as Laura Trenton
1972: The New
Temperatures Rising Show (TV Series) as Miss Brandon
1973: Adam-12 (TV
Series) as Ida Huntington
1974: The Girl
with Something Extra (TV Series) as Mrs. Elkins
1974: Witness to
Yesterday (TV Series) as Cleopatra
1976: James Dean
(TV Movie) as Reva Randall
1976: Norman... Is
That You? as Adele Hobart
1976: The Practice
(TV Series) as Mrs. Milnor
1976: The Nancy
Walker Show (TV Series) as Georgia
1977: Switch (TV
Series) as Andrea
1977: Sex and the
Married Woman (TV Movie) as Irma Caddish
1977: Have I Got a
Christmas for You (TV Movie) as Rita
1977–1981: Meeting
of Minds (TV Series) as Catherine the Great / Margaret Sanger / Florence
Nightingale / Dark Lady of the Sonnets / Elizabeth Barrett Browning / Marie
Antoinette / Cleopatra
1978–1987: The Love Boat (TV Series) as
Jayne Meadows / Janice / Mrs. Tate / Gwen Finley / Gertrude Benson / Myrna
Foster
1979: The Paper
Chase (TV Series) as Marian Chandler
1979: Project
U.F.O. (TV Series) as Marlene Baker
1979: Hawaii Five-O
(TV Series) as Jessica Humboldt
1979–1983: Fantasy
Island (TV Series) as Margaret Wharton / Beatrice Solomon / Contessa / Liz
Merrill / Nadine Winslow
1980: Tenspeed and
Brown Shoe (TV Series) as Ruth LaCross
1980: The Gossip
Columnist (TV Movie) as Jayne Meadows
1980–1982: Trapper
John, M.D. (TV Series) as Melissa / Edwina Garth
1981: Rise and
Shine (TV Series) as Mrs. Moffett
1981: Aloha
Paradise (TV Series)
1982: Miss
All-American Beauty (TV Movie) as Gertrude Hunnicutt
1982–1983: It's Not Easy (TV Series,
Recurring role) as Ruth Long
1983: Matt Houston
(TV Series) as Holly Harkens
1985: Hotel (TV
Series) as Fran Clark
1985: Da Capo as
Mrs. Thomas
1985: Alice in
Wonderland (TV Movie) as The Queen of Hearts
1986: Murder, She
Wrote (TV Series) as Lila Lee Amberson
1986: A
Masterpiece of Murder (TV Movie) as Matilda Hussey
1986: Crazy Like a
Fox (TV Series)
1987–1988: St.
Elsewhere (TV Series, Recurring role) as Olga Osoranski
1989: Parent Trap:
Hawaiian Honeymoon (TV Movie) as Charlotte Brink
1990: Murder by
Numbers as Pamela
1990: The Jackie
Bison Show (TV Series) as Mrs. St. Fawn
1991: City
Slickers as Mitch's Mom
1991: Square One
Television (TV Series) as Lady Esther Astor Astute
1991: Mathnet (TV
Series) as Lady Esther Astor Astute
1992: The Player
as Herself
1993: Sisters (TV
Series) as Ida Benbow
1993: For Goodness
Sake (Short)
1994: Tom (TV
Series) as Marianne
1994: City Slickers
II: The Legend of Curly's Gold as Mitch's Mother
1995–1996: High
Society (TV Series, Recurring role) as Alice Morgan
1997: The Nanny
(TV Series) as Herself
1998: Homicide:
Life on the Street (TV Series) as Mrs. Cochran
1999: Diagnosis
Murder (TV Series) as Connie Masters
1999: The Story of
Us as Dot (final film role)
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