Audrey Meadows

At 73 years old, Audrey Meadows has this physical status:

Audrey Meadows (born Audrey Cotter, 1922 – February 3, 1996), an American actress best known for her appearances as the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television show The Honeymoons, was born Audrey Cotter.

Early life

Meadows was born in 1922 in New York City, as the youngest of four siblings. There is a great deal of mystery regarding her year of birth and place of birth.

The Rev. Mary Davis, her parents, are distraught. Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, former Ida Miller Taylor, were Episcopal missionaries in Wuchang, China, where her three elder siblings were born. Jayne Meadows, the actress, was older sister, and she had two older brothers. In 1927, the family returned to the United States permanently. Audrey attended the Barrington School for Girls in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where she went to high school.

Personal life

Randolph Rouse, a wealthy real estate man, married her in 1956 (during the reign of The Honeymooners). Meadows married Robert F. Six, president of Continental Airlines, in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 24, 1961. He died on October 6, 1986.

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Career

Meadows appeared in the Broadway musical Top Banana before becoming a regular on television in The Bob and Ray Show. After the actress who starred Pert Kelton was forced to leave the show due to blacklisting (although the official explanation was that Kelton was suffering from a health condition), she was then hired to act Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show.

Meadows continued in the role as The Honeymooners became a half-hour situation comedy on CBS. After a long absence, she returned to Alice, when Gleason produced occasional Honeymooners specials in the 1970s. Meadows had auditioned for Gleason and was initially refused for being too trendy and pretty to play Alice. Meadows submitted a snapshot of herself the next day, one in which she looked much less appealing. Alice's role was changed when she was commissioned. Alice's character became more associated with Meadows than with those who performed her, and she reprised her role as Alice on other shows as well, both in a man-on-the-street interview for The Steve Allen Show (Steve Allen was her brother-in-law) and a parody sketch on The Jack Benny Program.

Meadows was the only member of the Honeymooners cast to earn residuals after the show's "Classic 39" episodes from 1955 to 1956 began airing in reruns. Edward, a lawyer, had written a clause into her original deal in which she would be paid if the shows were re-broadcast, thus earning her millions of dollars. Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, received royalty compensation when the "lost" Honeymooners episodes from the variety shows were later revealed.

Meadows appeared in a 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, titled "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat," one of the 17 episodes in the 10-year series directed by Hitchcock, as well as a rare lighthearted one.

She appeared in feature films and appeared on Dean Martin's television variety shows and celebrity roasts. In the episode's titled role of Nancy Palmer, she appeared in an episode of Wagon Train. Meadows returned to situation comedy in Too Close for Comfort (1982–85), playing Ted Knight's mother-in-law Ted Knight.

She appeared in an episode of Murder, She Wrote ("If the Frame Fits"), and appeared in an episode of The Simpsons ("Old Money"), in which she played Bea Simmons, Grampa Simpson's daughter. Her last work was on Dave's World, in which she played Kenny's mother (Shadoe Stevens).

Banking and marketing career

Meadows was the first woman to hold this position for ten years as the head of First National Bank of Denver. She served as an advisory director at Continental Airlines from 1961 to 1981, where she was instrumental in designing flight attendant and customer service agent uniforms, aircraft interiors, and Continental's exclusive "President's Club" airport club lounges.

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