Jayne Meadows

Chinese born-American actress and author (1919–2015)

Jayne Meadows

Meadows in the 1940s

Born|

Jane Cotter

(1919-09-27)September 27, 1919

Wuchang District, Wuhan, China

Died| April 26, 2015(2015-04-26) (aged 95)

Encino, Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Resting place| Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, California
Occupation(s)| Actress, author
Years active| 1941–2009
Known for|

* Undercurrent
* Song of the Thin Man
* David and Bathsheba
* Enchantment
* Lady in the Lake

Political party| Republican
Spouses|

* Milton Krims

(m. 1949; div. 1954)​

* Steve Allen

(m. 1954; died 2000)​

Children| 1
Relatives| Audrey Meadows (sister)
Website| jaynemeadows.com

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 elder sister of actress, banker, and memoirist Audrey Meadows as well as the wife of original Tonight Show host Steve Allen.

## Early life

[edit]

Meadows was born Jane Cotter in 1919,[1] in Wuchang, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the elder daughter of American Episcopal missionary 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]

## Career

[edit]

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed Jane Cotter to a movie contract in 1944, giving her the professional name Jayne Meadows. ("Meadows" was a paternal family name.) She specialized in playing intense character roles as opposed to ingenues. Her most famous movies include: Undercurrent (with Katharine Hepburn), Song of the Thin Man (with William Powell and Myrna Loy), David and Bathsheba (with Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, and Raymond Massey), Lady in the Lake (with Robert Montgomery and Audrey Totter), and Enchantment (with David Niven and Teresa Wright). Louella Parsons presented Meadows with the Cosmopolitan Award for Finest Dramatic Performance of 1949, for Enchantment.[4]

Among her earliest television appearances, Meadows played reporter Helen Brady in a 1953 episode of Suspense opposite Walter Matthau titled "F.O.B. Vienna". She was a regular panelist on the original version of I've Got a Secret and an occasional panelist on To Tell The Truth and What's My Line?, the latter alongside husband Steve Allen. She also appeared on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood. During the early days of the burgeoning live entertainment scene in Las Vegas, the Allens occasionally worked together as a nightclub act. The couple made several television appearances together. Allen's highly original series Meeting of Minds (1977-81) featured great names of history (Thomas Paine, Socrates, Catherine the Great, et al.) in a talk-show format. Allen insisted on casting his wife in most of the feminine roles, over her objections: "He came to me and he said, 'You're gonna play Cleopatra.' I said, 'I am not! Go away. Go away!' And he calmly said, 'It's a divorce if you don't play it.'" Meadows appeared nine times on the series, playing numerous historical characters (including Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and 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.

## Other ventures

[edit]

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

## Later life and death

[edit]

With husband Steve Allen in 1961

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]

## Filmography

[edit]

Main article: Jayne Meadows filmography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jayne Meadows.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Actress Jayne Meadows dies at 95; spent early years in Providence". The Providence Journal. April 28, 2015. Retrieved December 13, 2022.
2. ^ Miss Ida M. Taylor to be Bride of Rev. F.J.M. Cotter on May 27, The New York Times, April 16, 1915, accessed May 6, 2008.
3. ^ Pollak, Michael (April 27, 2015). "Jayne Meadows, Actress and Steve Allen's Wife and Co-Star, Dies at 95". The New York Times. p. A25.
4. ^ "Jayne Meadows - Movies". jaynemeadows.com. Retrieved June 7, 2024.
5. ^ Jayne Meadows interview, Hi-Ho, Steverino!, Arts & Entertainment Network (1994).
6. ^ "JFK archives" (PDF). archives.gov. Retrieved June 29, 2023.
7. ^ "Her business manager's suggestion that a little business might be good as a "tax thing" launched actress Jayne Meadows on her supplementary and successful career. She runs a travel agency on August 29, 1967 in Los Angeles. She also manages to travel with husband Steve Allen, to appear on their TV shows, and to keep up a social life with friends, Jayne is seen in her travel agency. (AP Photo/Wally Fong Stock Photo - Alamy". Archived from the original on May 14, 2023.
8. ^ Parsons, Louella (March 13, 1949). "In Hollywood". The Scrantonian. Pennsylvania, Scranton. p. 20. Retrieved July 3, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
9. ^ Severo, Richard (November 1, 2000). "Steve Allen, Comedian Who Pioneered Late-Night TV Talk Shows, Is Dead at 78". The New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
10. ^ Haynes, Karima A. (May 7, 1997). "Opposites Attract, Succeed for Decades". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
11. ^ Ungerman, Alex (April 27, 2015). "Legendary Actress Jayne Meadows Allen Dies at 95". Retrieved February 1, 2020.
12. ^ Wilson, Scott (August 19, 2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons (3d ed.). McFarland. p. 507\. ISBN 978-1476625997 – via Google Books.

## External links

[edit]

* Jayne Meadows at IMDb
* Jayne Meadows at the Internet Broadway Database
* Jayne Meadows radio interview WSLR with Doug Miles on YouTube
* Jayne Meadows at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST
* WorldCat

National|

* United States
* Czech Republic

Artists|

* Grammy Awards
* Emmy Awards

People|

* Deutsche Synchronkartei

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC

*[m.]: married
*[div.]: divorced