When ”The Honeymooners” soared to the top of the television ratings in the mid-`50s, so did the career of Audrey Meadows. She won an Emmy for her performance as the sassy Alice, the long-suffering wife to Jackie Gleason`s Ralph. While Meadows continues to act, she can look back over a career as a singer, dancer, comedian as well as dramatic actress. It`s an unlikely script for one who started life in China. Meadows talked recently with Chicago writer Catharine Reeve about her profession, a discipline that helped her cope with her husband`s fatal illness.
My father was an Episcopal minister, and for 14 years my family lived in China, in a city called Wuchang. We four children spoke Chinese before we spoke English. We left when the communists came, in the early 1930s. I was about 5 years old.
I think Jayne (Audrey`s older sister and also a well-known actress), and I have always been each other`s best friend because as minister`s children you`re uprooted a lot; you go to wherever the parish is, so you`re always leaving old friends behind and making new friends. Our whole family is close. I was painfully shy as a child. I had an uncle who told me, ”You know, when you were little, you would hide behind Jayne, and whatever the aunts and uncles would ask, she would answer.”
I don`t think I was that shy in China. I think it started when we came back to America and we were living in Providence, R.I. One day, Mother and Daddy were making their calls on parishioners, and they left us in the parish house.
We were playing cops and robbers and running up and down the stairs. I was on about the fifth floor, and I lifted up a window and there was a big open shaft. It was all pipes, and on one side was a roof with squares of wood and glass. I stepped out on the glass, and I fell right through and landed on my leg.
My leg was so badly cut that the doctor was going to amputate it at the knee. (Meadows` mother persuaded the doctor to try to save the leg. Two operations followed; the leg, though badly scarred, was not amputated.)
My mother was such a wise woman that she never told me until long after I was out of school that the doctor had said that I would never run again and probably wouldn`t walk well. And I was the fastest runner on the field hockey team at school!
The scar was a purply-red color, and I had to put this thick white salve on it and a white stocking. And all the kids would say, ”What`s the matter with your leg?” So for years, on the train, on the subway, anywhere that I was, I always sat on this leg and hid it.
I have a scar on my face that never worried me. But this was like ugliness of some kind.
I remember going to my father and saying, ”All the other girls, their legs are perfect, nobody has scars like mine.”
And he said, ”Now you just remember something, that God never gives anyone a burden too great for them to carry. That`s not such a burden for you. When you grow older, you`re going to hear people complain about all sorts of things, and you`re going to think, `Now, that`s a burden?` But it`s a burden to them.”
During World War II, Jayne and I both did shows for the USO and (visited) a lot of hospitals. I was going through a ward with seriously wounded young men, and this one boy was glum as hell, but he was in better shape than any of them. And I said, ”Now, why are you looking so unhappy?”
”Because,” he said, ”they put a steel plate in my leg in place of my shin bone.”
I said, ”Let me see.” It was a little nothing slit of a scar.
I said, ”And that`s bothering you?” It`s the first time I was ever happy I had my scars. We all wore those slacks, part of the USO uniform, and I pulled up (my pants leg) and you should have seen that poor little soldier`s face.
I said, ”It doesn`t matter with a man, you wear trousers all your life. How would you like to be a girl and have this hideous looking leg?”
That was the first time that I thought there was a reason for me to have it, if it could help somebody.
What got me past my shyness, I think, was my first job (as a performer). Jayne always wanted to be an actress, and she said to me, ”Oh, don`t go to college; we`ll go on the stage.”
I asked Jayne, ”What will I do on the stage?” and she said, ”We`ll get Daddy to drive us into New York, and we`ll job hunt, and you`ll sing.”
In my first audition at the Papermill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., out of desperation I managed to do a couple of bars of (music) sight reading, and I didn`t know anything about sight reading! I got a contract and I got a raise after a few days, and I thought I was the biggest star to ever hit the business!
My favorite role of all time was Alice in ”The Honeymooners.” I didn`t even know they were casting the part of Alice until Jackie Gleason`s manager ran into my manager (in 1952). I ended up going to the hotel, where Life magazine was doing a big spread on Jackie. He stopped the photographers and the interview, and the three of us (Meadows and the two managers) went in.
Jackie was polite and very nice, and then he asked the two men to wait a minute, and I went out into the hall. And he said, ”Why don`t you guys take the needles out of your head? She is all wrong for the part. She is too young and too pretty.”
My manager told me what Jackie had said. I wasn`t really serious about the role until I was about to be turned down.
”So he thinks I`m too young and too pretty,” I said to my manager.
”You get a photographer up to my apartment tomorrow morning. I`m not going to get out of bed until you ring the bell.”
I got an old blouse and tore the sleeve out. I had some combs, and I just pulled my hair back and pulled little straggly pieces down.
When they rang the bell the next morning, I got up with no makeup on and posed with the frying pan and the coffee pot.
We gave the photographs to Gleason`s manager and said to take the pictures in with no name on them.
He did, and Jackie took one look and said, ”This is Alice! Who is she?
Where is she? Can we get her?”
And his manager said, ”That`s the girl who was in here yesterday to see you.”
Gleason laughed so hard, and he said, ”Any dame with a sense of humor like that deserves the job.” I was hired.
He was divine to work with, an absolute genius. I`ve never been in a show that had the chemistry of everybody together like that. We were all very close. Through the years I went back and did specials with him.
My husband died Oct. 6, 1986. (Meadows was married to Robert Six, president of Continental Airlines, in 1961.)
I did very badly at first. We were married over 25 years. It was as if there was no life before I met him, as if my entire life was packed into those 25 years.
I think when you don`t have children, two people, if it`s right and it`s good, have a very strong, powerful bond.
I knew that Bob wasn`t going to make it, but he didn`t know. He had cancer, but he never knew he had cancer.
He never had chemo, he never had pain, he didn`t suffer, he didn`t have any of the terrible things, and I think one of the main reasons is that he didn`t know he had it.
I never told anyone, not even my sister or my brother.
I had to go to the Emmy Awards (one night while he was ill); they had everybody from the `50s do a number at the end.
I was sitting in the room, and every star in the business was there. Everybody had asked about Bob, and I said, ”Oh, he`s fine.”
Suddenly it welled up, the fact that I was lying and I had been lying so much to everybody.
I thought, ”Oh, my God, I`m going to fall apart,” and then I thought,
”I can`t fall apart.”
On top of the television set was a great big bowl of flowers, and I forced myself to look at the flowers. I studied every petal and every little detail on them and thought of the miracle that God had made with the gardens and the flowers and everything.
I did this to erase the mental pictures that I was getting. Because I was seeing Bob lying in bed waiting for me to get home, while I was telling everybody that he was fine, as if he just couldn`t get there. And I had to replace that mental image.
On stage your concentration has to be there. You can`t be self-pitying or grieving.
The shocking thing (about his death) for me is that I never thought I could be angry at God, and I was. It was very, very difficult for me to say my prayers because He had given me Bob for all those years of completeness and joy and then had taken him away.
When I was by myself, I would be really hysterical, and that is not my personality, it is not my nature. I`ve always been considered kind of unflappable.
I had a whole row-they are still there-of Bob`s warm-up suits, and I would go into the closet and push them all together so it made a big warm wad, and I would just hug those warm-up suits, crying my eyes out.
The strangest sensation I had was where my heart was supposed to be, it was like a big rock was physically in there.
But I forgave God. . . .
I never lost my faith, I just was angry. It was a childish manifestation, to be angry, but I think we have to accept whatever our emotional set-up is.
I find myself doing and thinking things that were strictly Bob`s personality, not mine. I`m very conscious that he`s helping me.
I think we`re in an age where people will open up more and more (to this belief). I think we have to.
I once said to Bob when we were building this house (in Los Angeles),
”There are a lot of people you have to entertain socially that are business people, and I`m willing to go along with you. But if they are unhappy and negative people, I would ask that we take them out for dinner and not have them here.”
He agreed with me completely. And lots of people, when they come in here for the first time, remark on the calm, peaceful feeling in this house.
