Audrey Meadows was an American actress best known for her role as the deadpan
housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The
Honeymooners. Early life
Born as Audrey Cotter in New York City in 1922, she was the youngest of four
siblings. Her parents, the Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, the
former Ida Miller Taylor, had been Episcopal missionaries in Wu-ch'ang,
China, where her three elder siblings were born. The family returned to live
in New York in 1921. Her older sister was actress Jayne Meadows. She attended
high school at the Barrington School for Girls in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts. Career
After high school, she sang in the Broadway musical Top Banana before
becoming a regular on television in The Bob and Ray Show. She was then hired to
play Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show after the actress who originated the
role, Pert Kelton, was forced to leave the show due to blacklisting, although
the official reason given was that Kelton was suffering from a health
problem. When The Honeymooners became a half-hour situation comedy on CBS,
Meadows continued in the role. She then returned to play Alice after a long
hiatus, when Gleason produced occasional Honeymooners specials in the 1970s.
Meadows had auditioned for Gleason and was initially turned down for being too
chic and pretty to play Alice. Meadows submitted a far different photo of
herself, looking much plainer, the next day and won the role of Alice.
The character of Alice became more associated with Meadows than with the
others who played her, and she reprised her role as Alice on other shows, as
well, both in a man-on-the-street interview for The Steve Allen Show and
in a parody sketch on The Jack Benny Program.
Meadows was the only member of the Honeymooners cast to earn residuals
after the "Classic 39" episodes of the show from 1955-56 started airing in
reruns. Her brother Edward, a lawyer, had inserted a clause into her original
contract whereby she would be paid if the shows were rebroadcast, thus earning
her millions of dollars. However, Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, did
receive royalty payments when the "lost" Honeymooners episodes from the variety
shows were later released. Career outside The Honeymooners
She appeared in a 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, entitled "Mrs. Bixby
and the Colonel's Coat", one of the 17 episodes in the 10-year series directed
by Hitchcock himself. She appeared in feature films, appeared
on Dean Martin's television variety shows and celebrity roasts, and years
later returned to situation comedy in the 1980s playing Ted Knight's
mother-in-law on Too Close for Comfort. She guest-starred on The Red Skelton
Show, made an appearance in an episode of Murder, She Wrote, and made an
appearance in an episode of The Simpsons, wherein she voiced the role of
Bea Simmons, Grandpa Simpson's girlfriend. Her last work was an
appearance on Dave's World, in which she played the mother of Kenny.
Personal life In 1956, she married a wealthy real
estate man named Randolph Rouse. On August 24, 1961, Meadows married her
second husband, Robert F. "Bob" Six, president of Continental Airlines, in
Honolulu, Hawaii. They remained married until Six's death on October 6, 1986.
She had no children by either marriage. Meadows never remarried.
Banking and marketing career Meadows served as director of the First
National Bank of Denver for 11 years, the first woman to hold this position.
From 1961–1981, she was an advisory director of Continental Airlines, where
she was actively involved in marketing programs that included the designs of
flight attendant and customer service agent uniforms, aircraft interiors, and
Continental's exclusive "President's Club" airport club lounges.
Memoirs In October 1994, Meadows published her
memoirs, Love, Alice: My Life As A Honeymooner.
Illness and death In 1995, Meadows was diagnosed with lung
cancer and given a year to live. She declined all but palliative treatment.
She died on February 3, 1996, at Cedars Sinai Hospital-Los Angeles after
slipping into a coma, five days before her 74th birthday. She was interred in
Holy Cross Cemetery, next to her husband.
References External links
Audrey Meadows official website Audrey Meadows at Find a Grave