Jayne Meadows, a glamorous redheaded actress who starred on Broadway, in the movies and on television, but who was probably best known for her 46-year role as Steve Allen’s wife, business partner and frequent co-star, died on Sunday at her home in Encino, Calif. She was 95.
Her son, Bill Allen, confirmed her death on Monday.
Ms. 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 Jayne Meadows Cotter on Sept. 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.
Ms. Meadows made her Broadway debut in 1941 in the comedy “Spring Again.” Her other Broadway appearances included “Another Love Story” (1943); “Many Happy Returns” (1945), with Mary Astor; and “Kiss Them for Me” (1945), in which she was featured with Richard Widmark.
She was originally billed as Jayne Cotter, but she and her sister both changed their professional name to Meadows. According to her website (jaynemeadows.com), Louis B. Mayer of MGM “ordered her to change the Cotter since they had a contract player named Audrey Totter (whose real surname, incidentally, wasn’t Totter).”
Her first movie was “Undercurrent” (1946), starring Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor and Robert Mitchum. She recalled on her website that George Cukor, who had directed her screen test, asked Ms. Hepburn’s opinion of the newcomer, and that she replied, “Considering I’m old enough to be her mother and she’s playing my rival, I think she’s a genius.”
Her next few years in Hollywood were busy. She made three movies in 1947 alone: “Dark Delusion,” with Lionel Barrymore; “Lady in the Lake,” with Robert Montgomery, in which she played a psychopathic murderer; and “Song of the Thin Man,” with William Powell and Myrna Loy. 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.
She married Milton Krims, a screenwriter, in 1948; they later divorced.
Ms. Meadows returned to Broadway in the 1958 production of “The Gazebo,” with Walter Slezak. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote, “Miss Meadows gives an animated, sardonic performance that pulls the play up taut when it threatens to amble off.”
But by then she had become more of a television fixture than a stage or film actress. Game shows were a specialty: She was a regular panel member on “I’ve Got a Secret” from 1952 to 1959 and a frequent guest on “What’s My Line?,” “Password” and other shows. She also acted in many of television’s classic drama programs: “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” “Studio One” and “General Electric Theater,” among others. From 1969 to 1972 she was a cast member on the hospital drama “Medical Center” with Chad Everett.
Ms. Meadows was best known for her work with Mr. Allen, the comedian, songwriter and talk-show host, whom she married in 1954. Beginning with the original “Tonight” show, which he created, Mr. Allen was the host of several shows in the 1950s and ’60s, and she appeared on all of them.
In 1960 the two were in the movie “College Confidential.” In 1985 she played the Queen of Hearts in a television movie of “Alice in Wonderland,” for which Mr. Allen wrote the music and lyrics. The couple also made joint appearances on several series, including “Love, American Style” in 1970 and “Homicide: Life on the Street” in 1998. Mr. Allen died in 2000.
From 1977 to 1981 Ms. Meadows performed in, and wrote for, Mr. Allen’s PBS series “Meeting of Minds,” in which he assembled historical figures for a time-warped, what-if conversation. Among the women she played were Cleopatra, Margaret Sanger, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Florence Nightingale. For her portrayal of Susan B. Anthony, she won the first Women’s Equality Day award from the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women in 1979.
She and her sister made several records as the Meadows Sisters for RCA Victor. When Audrey Meadows died in 1996, her last word was reportedly “Jayne,” after her sister had rushed to her bedside.
Besides her son, who is president and chief executive of the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, Ms. Meadows is survived by three stepsons, Steve Jr., Brian and David; three grandchildren; eight step-grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.)
Ms. Meadows returned to the New York stage in 1978 after a 20-year absence. Billing herself as Jayne Meadows Allen, she appeared in a revival of Kaufman and Hart’s “Once in a Lifetime,” playing an over-the-top Hollywood gossip columnist. Walter Kerr, writing in The Times, commented, “Miss Allen floats in like fresh green seaweed borne shoreward by her own tidal wave of chatter, silver slippers and gloves flashing signals like the RKO tower, whooping with laughter that would do credit to an unstrung hyena.”
For the part she wore a bright red wig, a green dress, and rhinestone shoes and tiara — an ensemble inspired, she said, by memories of how the real-life gossip columnist Hedda Hopper dressed.
She had been so believable during a previous run of the play, in Los Angeles, she said in 1978, that The Hollywood Reporter offered her a job as a syndicated gossip columnist.
“I told them thanks but no thanks,” she said. “I’m too insecure to have people hate me. I didn’t want to write gossip about my friends. And besides, I make more money acting.”
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