Entertainer Jayne Meadows, 95, dies
TV personality often teamed with husband Steve Allen
LOS ANGELES – Jayne Meadows, the Emmy-nominated actress and TV personality who often teamed with her husband, Steve Allen, has died. She was 95. Meadows died of natural causes Sunday at her home in the Encino, California, area.
Though best known as the wife of the beloved TV host – and the sister of “Honeymooners” star Audrey Meadows – Jayne Meadows had a solid career in her own right. She appeared on Broadway and in movies, gained three prime-time Emmy nominations as a TV actress and was a staple of talk shows and game shows.
The red-haired Meadows appeared in several Broadway shows and films before she first became known to a wider audience as a panelist on the prime-time game show, “I’ve Got a Secret.”
She was on the popular show from its first year, 1952, until the late 1950s. In the midst of this, she met and married Allen, tying the knot in 1954, just as he was starting his run as the first host of “The Tonight Show.” Allen died in 2000.
“The thing that made me a name on television was not acting – it was (the game show),” Meadows told the Los Angeles Times. With that and her marriage, she added, “Instead of being the tortured actress who might have become an alcoholic or whatever, I … settled for the security of love, a home, children, money in the bank and ‘I’ve Got a Secret.’ ”
Jayne Meadows’ innumerable TV guest credits include many appearances on her husband’s shows: “Tonight,” “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour,” as well as other talk shows.
One of her Emmy nods, for best guest actress in a series, came in 1978 for “Meeting of Minds,” Allen’s 1977-81 PBS show that portrayed historical figures getting together for a chat. Among the characters Meadows played were Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette and Florence Nightingale, the role that got her the Emmy nod.
Meadows got another Emmy nomination in 1987 as guest performer in a drama series for “St. Elsewhere” and again in 1996 for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for “High Society.”
She had been largely retired since her husband’s death.