Audrey Meadows (February 8, 1922 – February 3, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The Honeymooners.
Meadows was born Audrey Cotter in Wu-ch'ang, China, to Episcopal missionaries Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter and Ida Cotter (née Ida Miller Taylor).
Shortly after her birth, Meadows' family returned to their home in Sharon, Connecticut. After high school, she moved to New York City and became a singer in the Broadway show Top Banana before becoming a regular on the Bob and Ray Show. She was then hired to play Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show after the original Alice, Pert Kelton, who originated the role when the Honeymooners was a skit on Gleason's variety show, lost the role due to the blacklist. Her absence was explained away as due to her health.
Meadows retained the role when The Honeymooners became a half-hour situation comedy on CBS. She then returned to play Alice after a long hiatus, when Gleason produced occasional Honeymooners specials in the 1970s. Meadows had auditioned for Gleason and was initially turned down for being too chic and pretty for the drab Alice. Meadows later submitted a photo of herself as plain and decidedly un-chic, which won her the role. She and Gleason had a pleasant, friendly rapport when working together.
Meadows appeared in a number of films, worked with Dean Martin on his celebrity roasts, and then returned to situation comedy in the 1980s playing the mother-in-law on Too Close for Comfort. She had an appearance in an episode of The Simpsons, "Old Money", where she did the voice of Bea Simmons, Grampa Simpsons' girlfriend; her character died in that episode.
On August 24, 1961, Meadows married Robert F. "Bob" Six, President of Continental Airlines, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Their marriage was happy, but childless. Meadows served as director of the First National Bank of Denver for eleven years, the first woman to hold this position, and was also an Advisory Director of Continental Airlines. Six died in 1986.
In October 1994, Meadows published her memoirs, entitled, Love, Alice.
In 1995, Audrey, a life-long chain smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, but declined treatment. She was apparently estranged from her sister and her sister's family and had not been on speaking terms with them for at least a year. Jayne Meadows was unaware of Audrey's illness and first learned her sister was hospitalized when she was on a Hollywood soundstage appearing on an episode of the short-lived sitcom High Society. She rushed to the hospital but Meadows was already in a coma.
Meadows died on February 3, 1996, just five days before her 74th birthday. She is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California
