Audrey Meadows

After high school, Meadows sang in the Broadway musical Top Banana before becoming a regular on television in The Bob and Ray Show.[7] She was then hired to play Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show after the actress who originated the role, Pert Kelton (who was 9 years older than Gleason), was forced to leave the show due to blacklisting (although the official reason given was that Kelton was suffering from a health problem).[1]

When The Honeymooners became a half-hour situation comedy on CBS, Meadows (who was 6 years younger than Gleason) continued in the role.[7] She then returned to play Alice after a long hiatus, when Gleason produced occasional Honeymooners specials in the 1970s.[1] Meadows had auditioned for Gleason and was initially turned down for being too chic and pretty to play Alice. Realizing that she needed to change her appearance, Meadows the next day submitted a photo of herself, one in which she looked much plainer.[7][1] Gleason changed his mind and she won the role of Alice.[1] The character of Alice became more associated with Meadows than with the others who played 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 in a parody sketch on The Jack Benny Program.[7][1]

Meadows was the only member of the Honeymooners cast to earn residuals after the "Classic 39" episodes of the show from 1955 to 1956 started airing in reruns. Her brother Edward, a lawyer, had inserted a clause into her original contract whereby she would be paid if the shows were re-broadcast, thus earning her millions of dollars.[8] When the "lost" Honeymooners episodes from the variety shows were later released, Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton, received royalty payments.[9]

For her work on the show, Meadows went on to earn one nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (then for "In a Regular Series") at the 8th Primetime Emmy Awards. She lost to Nanette Fabray in Caesar's Hour.

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 himself, and a rare light-hearted one.

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

She guest-starred on The Red Skelton Show, made an appearance in an episode of Murder, She Wrote ("If the Frame Fits"), and made an appearance in an episode of The Simpsons ("Old Money"), wherein she voiced the role of Bea Simmons, Grampa Simpson's girlfriend. During the second year of her second retirement, she returned to television in 1988 on CBS Summer Playhouse. Her last work was an appearance on Dave's World, in which she played the mother of Kenny (Shadoe Stevens).

In total, Meadows went on to earn four Primetime Emmy nominations for her work in television. Out of those four, she won one for her work on The Jackie Gleason Show.