Audrey Meadows, 71, `Alice' In '50S TV `Honeymooners'

LOS ANGELES - Audrey Meadows, who as Alice on the 1950s comedy "The Honeymooners" played one of television's strongest, most spirited wives, died Saturday of cancer. She was 71.

Meadows, who died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, had kept her illness a secret, even from her actress sister Jayne Meadows, until newspapers learned of her hospitalization early this year.

"She was so full of life just a month ago," Jayne Meadows, who co-stars on the CBS series "High Society" and is married to entertainer Steve Allen, told Daily Variety.

Audrey Meadows starred with Jackie Gleason as lovebirds and sparring partners Ralph and Alice Kramden in "The Honeymooners." Meadows held her own against the bigger-than-life Gleason and his blustering bus driver.

"To the moon, Alice!" was Ralph's oft-heard cry, an unfulfilled threat to deliver a shot - "Pow!" - to the kisser. Alice was unfazed, and many shows ended with hugs and Ralph's admission, "Baby, you're the greatest."

Art Carney and Joyce Randolph played neighbors Ed and Trixie Norton on the comedy, which has enjoyed enduring popularity and ranks as a TV classic.

"Jackie's answer was simply that it was funny," Meadows said in 1993. She offered her own theory: "I think it was so well-written, and the chemistry between the four of us just happened."

A "Honeymooners" memoir by Meadows, "Love, Alice," was published in 1994. In an interview that year, she described Alice's special appeal, and Ralph's.

"I loved that character of Alice, because she was strong and she was tender. She was everything that I think is fine in a woman," she said. "Why did she stay with Ralph? Because she understood him - and he obviously was thin when she married him."

After leaving "The Honeymooners" in 1957, Meadows played occasional guest roles on TV dramas and appeared on panel shows throughout the 1950s and '60s.

She virtually retired from acting after her marriage to Continental Airlines chairman Robert Six, turning her attention to business activities and her family.

Meadows returned to television in 1977 for a series of "Honeymooners" reunions and went on to other roles, including a recurring part as Ted Knight's mother-in-law on the 1980s sit-com "Too Close for Comfort."