Sunday, April 26, 2015

Jayne Meadows obit

Jayne Meadows dies at 95; actress, wife of Steve Allen

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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