Sheila MacRae

Sheila Margaret MacRae (née Stephens; September 24, 1921 – March 6, 2014) was an English-born American actress, singer, and dancer whose career spanned film, television, and Broadway. Born in London in 1921, she relocated to Long Island, New York, in 1939 when her parents evacuated her there ahead of World War II. She completed high school at the age of 15 and went on to become a naturalized United States citizen on March 20, 1959, in California.

MacRae's film work included appearances in Caged (1950), Backfire (1950), and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). On television, she played herself in the I Love Lucy episode "The Fashion Show," in which her character invites Lucy to participate in a Hollywood fashion show organized by Don Loper and featuring actors' wives as models. Her most sustained television role came between 1966 and 1970, when she played Alice Kramden in 52 episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show, succeeding Audrey Meadows in the part. She subsequently hosted her own short-lived series, The Sheila MacRae Show, and in 1991 joined the cast of the long-running soap opera General Hospital as Madelyn Richmond.

MacRae's Broadway career extended from 1965 to 1974. She had previously performed on stage alongside her first husband, actor and singer Gordon MacRae, whom she married in 1941, in productions including a 1964 staging of Bells Are Ringing. She brought the role of Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls to Broadway in the 1965 revival, and later appeared on Broadway in Absurd Person Singular. MacRae and Gordon MacRae divorced in 1967; together they had four children, daughters Heather and Meredith and sons William Gordon and Robert Bruce. Meredith predeceased her mother. MacRae later married Ronald Wayne, a television producer.

MacRae died suddenly on March 6, 2014, at the Lillian Booth Actor's Home in Englewood, New Jersey, at the age of 92. Her daughter Heather reported that while MacRae had been living with dementia, she had otherwise been in good health and was hospitalized for a minor surgical procedure when she died of natural causes. She was cremated shortly after her death.