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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.
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).Jayne Meadows interview, Hi-Ho, Steverino!, Arts & Entertainment Network (1994).
In 1998, they played an argumentative elderly couple in an episode of 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 , 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.
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.
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. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, beside Steve Allen.
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