Jayne Meadows

Jayne Meadows (born Jane Cotter; September 27, 1919 – April 26, 2015) was an American stage, film and television actress, as well as an author and lecturer. She was nominated for three Emmy Awards during her career and was the wife of original Tonight Show host Steve Allen. She was the elder sister of actress, banker, and memoirist Audrey Meadows.

Meadows was born Jane Cotter in 1919,^[1] in Wuchang, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the elder daughter of American Episcopalmissionary parents, the Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, the former Ida Miller Taylor, who had married in 1915.^[2] Her younger sister was actress Audrey Meadows. She also had two older brothers. In the early 1930s, the family settled in Sharon, Connecticut, where her father had been appointed rector of Christ Church. Both she and her sister Audrey became residents of The Rehearsal Club in NYC when they struck out to seek their careers.^[3]

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contrató a Jane Cotter para una película en 1944, dándole el nombre artístico de Jayne Meadows. ("Meadows" era un apellido paterno). Se especializó en interpretar papeles de personajes intensos, a diferencia de las ingenuas. Entre sus películas más famosas se encuentran: Undercurrent (con Katharine Hepburn ), Song of the Thin Man (con William Powell y Myrna Loy ), David and Bathsheba (con Gregory Peck , Susan Hayward y Raymond Massey ), Lady in the Lake (con Robert Montgomery y Audrey Totter ) y Enchantment (con David Niven y Teresa Wright ). Louella Parsons le entregó a Meadows el Premio Cosmopolitan a la Mejor Actuación Dramática de 1949 por Enchantment . ^{[ 4 ]}

Entre sus primeras apariciones en televisión, Meadows interpretó a la reportera Helen Brady en un episodio de Suspense de 1953 junto a Walter Matthau titulado "FOB Vienna". Fue panelista habitual en la versión original de I've Got a Secret y panelista ocasional en To Tell The Truth y What's My Line?, este último junto a su esposo Steve Allen . También apareció en el programa de entrevistas de la NBC Here's Hollywood . Durante los primeros días de la floreciente escena del entretenimiento en vivo en Las Vegas , los Allen trabajaron ocasionalmente juntos como un número de club nocturno. La pareja hizo varias apariciones en televisión juntos. La serie muy original de Allen Meeting of Minds (1977-81) presentó a grandes nombres de la historia ( Thomas Paine , Sócrates , Catalina la Grande , etc.) en un formato de programa de entrevistas. Allen insistió en que su esposa interpretara la mayoría de los papeles femeninos, a pesar de sus objeciones: "Vino a mí y me dijo: 'Vas a interpretar a Cleopatra'. Le dije: '¡No lo haré! ¡Vete! ¡Vete!'" Y él dijo con calma: «Es un divorcio si no lo interpretas». Meadows apareció nueve veces en la serie, interpretando a numerosos personajes históricos (entre ellos Cleopatra, María Antonieta, Catalina la Grande, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Barrett Browning y Florence Nightingale). ^{[ 5 ]}

In 1998, they played an argumentative elderly couple in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street in which Allen's character accidentally shoots a man who was in the act of committing suicide (by jumping from the roof of the elderly couple's building). In 1999, the couple made their last joint TV appearance (again playing a couple) in the all-star episode of the Dick Van Dyke series Diagnosis: Murder, titled "The Roast", which marked Steve Allen's final screen appearance. She also appeared in City Slickers, as the telephone voice of Billy Crystal's character's over-protective and oversolicitous mother.

Steve Allen's series of ten humorous mystery novels (in part ghostwritten) that began with The Talk Show Murders (1982) cast Allen and Meadows in the roles of amateur detectives.

Meadows owned a travel agency from at least 1964^[6] until at least 1967.^[7]

Meadows was first married to screenwriter Milton Krims from 1949 to 1954.^[8] She was later married to Steve Allen, from 1954 until his death in 2000. They had one son, Bill. Allen's three sons from his first marriage (Stephen Jr., Brian and David) are her stepsons.^[9]

Meadows was active in Republican affairs although Steve Allen was a Democrat. She was the recipient of several honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from various universities.^[10]

She remained active until 2009, when she fell and fractured her hip. Her last public appearance was in August 2009 at the Early TV Memories First-Class Commemorative Stamp Dedication Ceremony. She died on April 26, 2015, of natural causes at her home in Encino, California, aged 95.^[11] She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, beside Steve Allen.^[12]

• Jayne Meadows en IMDb
• Jayne Meadows en la base de datos de Broadway en Internet
• Entrevista de radio de Jayne Meadows en WSLR con Doug Miles en YouTube
• Jayne Meadows en The Interviews: An Oral History of Television