Audrey Meadows

Audrey Meadows, born Audrey Cotter on February 8, 1922, in New York City, was an American actress best known for her portrayal of Alice Kramden on the 1950s television comedy The Honeymooners. She was the youngest of four siblings born to the Reverend Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, the former Ida Miller Taylor, Episcopal missionaries based in Wuchang, China, where her three older siblings were born. The family relocated permanently to the United States in 1927. Meadows attended the Barrington School for Girls in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and upon moving to New York City to pursue an acting career, she lived at the Rehearsal Club alongside other aspiring actresses. Her older sister was actress Jayne Meadows.

Meadows launched her professional career on Broadway, appearing in the 1951 musical Top Banana. She subsequently became a regular on television through The Bob and Ray Show before being cast as Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show, taking over the role from Pert Kelton, who had originated it. Meadows had initially been rejected by Gleason, who considered her too polished in appearance for the part. She responded by submitting a photograph of herself looking considerably plainer, which persuaded Gleason to reconsider and offer her the role. When The Honeymooners expanded into a half-hour sitcom format, Meadows continued as Alice, and she reprised the character decades later when Gleason produced Honeymooners specials in the 1970s. The role became more closely identified with Meadows than with any other actress who played it, and she revisited the character in additional appearances, including a man-on-the-street segment on The Steve Allen Show and a parody sketch on The Jack Benny Program.

Her brother Edward, a lawyer, had negotiated a clause into her original Honeymooners contract entitling her to residual payments if episodes were rebroadcast. When the "Classic 39" episodes from 1955 to 1956 entered syndication, Meadows became the only member of the principal cast to receive those royalties, ultimately earning her millions of dollars. For her performance on the series, she received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress at the 8th Primetime Emmy Awards, losing to Nanette Fabray for Caesar's Hour. In total, Meadows earned four Primetime Emmy nominations throughout her career, winning one for her work on The Jackie Gleason Show.

Beyond The Honeymooners, Meadows maintained an active television and film career. She appeared in a 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat," one of seventeen episodes in that series directed by Hitchcock himself. She starred in a titled-role episode of Wagon Train as Nancy Palmer, appeared on The Red Skelton Show, and later played Ted Knight's mother-in-law in the sitcom Too Close for Comfort from 1982 to 1985. She also made guest appearances on Murder, She Wrote and voiced the character Bea Simmons, Grampa Simpson's girlfriend, in an episode of The Simpsons titled "Old Money." She appeared on Dean Martin's television variety programs and celebrity roasts, returned to television in 1988 on CBS Summer Playhouse, and made her final television appearance on Dave's World, playing the mother of the character Kenny, portrayed by Shadoe Stevens.

Outside of performing, Meadows served for eleven years as a director of the First National Bank of Denver, becoming the first woman to hold that position. From 1961 to 1981, she was an advisory director of Continental Airlines, where she contributed to marketing initiatives including the design of flight attendant and customer-service uniforms, aircraft interiors, and the airline's President's Club airport lounges.

In her personal life, Meadows married real-estate businessman Randolph Rouse in 1956. Her second marriage, to Robert F. Six, president of Continental Airlines, took place on August 24, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Six died on October 6, 1986. In October 1994, Meadows published her memoirs, Love, Alice: My Life As A Honeymooner. Diagnosed with lung cancer in 1995 and given approximately one year to live, she declined all but palliative treatment. Meadows died on February 3, 1996, after slipping into a coma at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, five days before her seventy-fourth birthday. She was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, next to her second husband.