Jayne Meadows, a veteran actress and widow of TV legend Steve Allen, has died at her home in Encino, California. She was 95
New York: Jayne Meadows, a veteran actress and widow of TV legend Steve Allen, has died at her home in Encino, California. She was 95.
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Her son, Bill Allen, confirmed her death on Monday.
Meadows was never as well known as her younger sister, Audrey, who played Alice Kramden on the now-classic Jackie
Gleason sitcom "The Honeymooners". But she was a versatile and accomplished actress in her own right and a familiar presence on television for years, in dramatic productions, prime-time series and game shows.
She was born as Jayne Meadows Cotter on September 27, 1919, in Wuchang, China, where her father, Francis James Meadows Cotter, and her mother, the former Ida Miller Taylor, were Episcopal missionaries.
The family moved back to the United States in 1927, and her father eventually became rector of Christ Church in Sharon, Conn.
After attending a girls' boarding school with her sister, she went to New York to be an actress. Meadows made her Broadway debut in 1941 in the comedy "Spring Again". Her first movie was "Undercurrent" (1946), starring Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum.
Her next few years in Hollywood were busy. She made three movies in 1947 alone -- "Dark Delusion", "Lady in the Lake" and "Song of the Thin Man".
Her work in "Enchantment" (1948), with David Niven, led one reviewer to call her "violently sinister". She was also in the biblical epic "David and Bathsheba" (1951), with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward.
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