‘Darling…No One Is As Devoted As a Dog,’ Jayne Meadows on Pets on Her 90th Birthday

Jayne and Steve

            “My dear, life is better with a dog, for anyone but especially us seniors,” says Jayne Meadows by telephone from her Hollywood, CA home. “That dog is another being to talk to. Of course, I just talk and talk – even if I talk to myself. At my age, my friends worry about their aches and pains. Well, my friends who are still alive. Sometimes I think people want me for interviews from the old Hollywood days because I’m the only one alive. We spend too much time thinking about ourselves instead of enjoying life. Dogs show us how to do that.”

              This month, (September, 2008) Meadows celebrates her 90th birthday. Never a Hollywood superstar, she always worked, on Broadway, on TV and in film. Back in the day, everyone knew her name. She doesn’t argue if you suggest her greatest claim to fame was her husband of 46 years, TV legend, prolific song composer and author Steve Allen.

            Allen not only hosted the first “Tonight Show” (in 1954), he invented the genre.

            “Whatever it was, he did it first,” says Meadows, who still gets teary-eyed reminiscing about her late husband, who passed as a result of a car crash in 2000.

            Years before Joan Embery walked out to Johnny Carson with an animal from the San Diego Zoo, or Jack Hannah brought a giant inset out to walk across David Letterman’s desk, Steve Allen was invited animals on live TV. “Steve loved working with animals and children because it was always so unpredictable, he thrived on that,” Meadows says.          

            Ben Alba, author of “inventing late night: Steve Allen and the original tonight show (Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2005: $28) recalls when Allen introduced a young singer named Elvis Presley to perform a song called “Hound Dog.” Allen introduced a Bassett Hound to sing-a-long. In another bit Allen was smothered with peanut butter, but he wasn’t told why. Then, he was told to lie down on stage and to holler “Gravy train.” He did, and out came a dozen or so dogs from back stage.

            In his personal life, Allen happened to love dogs. “All my life, I’ve had at least two dogs,” says Meadows. In the 1980’s, they discovered White German Shepherd dogs. “They were considered a mistake, but we thought they were the most beautiful creature, and so marvelously devoted. Of course, all dogs give that unconditional love. But these dogs, so mystical.”

            Their first White Shepherd was named Snowball. When that dog passed, there was Snowball number two. And recently Snowball number three passed on, and so did Meadows’ small white poodle. “I received sympathy cards from the entire neighborhood. Everyone knew the dogs because we live at the top of a hill, and everyone saw them look over the valley like Greek Gods.”

With Katherine Hepburn in “Undercurrent”

            Meadows sounds as energetic and youthful as she did her days as an on-screen ingénue, in movies with the likes of leading men such as David Niven. Gergory Peck and Tyrone Power. “Oh my dear, those days are over,” she says, and then launches into a story about actress Celeste Holm. Why Celebeste Holm? Who knows? Meadows says she was appearing on Broadway in one play while Holm was in “Oklahoma.” Meadows predicted her good friend would be starring in a flop. Meadows spontaneously begins singing a song from Oklahoma. She says, “Hard to believe today, but ‘Oklahoma’ was innovative in its day.”

            Asked how she met her husband Steve, 20 minutes later she’s still telling the rather lengthy story. It begins with leaving her first husband, who was much older than Jayne, as they were at one time living in Italy. When she returned to America, to save money, she lived with her late sister, Audrey. Of course, Audrey Meadows, is most well known for playing Alice Kramden with Jackie Gleason on “The Honeymooners.” At some point in the story, Audrey and Jayne are at dinner, and into the room walks a tall bespectacled personality new TV. “I thought to myself, if this guy isn’t married, he will be soon, and to me.”

            On TV, Jayne Meadows’ various gigs as a game show regular began with “I’ve Got a Secret,” (1952-’59). Her TV career is amazing, from classic TV shows of the 1950’s, such as “Kraft Theater” to turns on “Fantasy Island” and “Love Boat” in the 1970’s. Her TV appearances number in the hundreds, well into the 1990’s on “Murder She Wrote,” “Diagnosis Murder” and others. Overall, she’s been nominated for five Emmy Awards, including one for “Meeting of Minds,” on PBS (1976-’80), where she, Allen and others portrayed famous characters in history. Her roles included Florence Nightingale, Queen Cleopatra, Catherine the Great and William Shakespeare’s mistress.

Jayne and Steve on The Tonight Show with Louis Nye

            Somehow, Meadows transitions back to talking about pets. In the early 1970’s, the late actor Richard Basehart and his wife Diana began Actors and Others for Animals. And guess who was there? She says, “Right now, I’m looking at a picture with (the late animal activist) Cleveland Amory, with Mary Tyler Moore, Angie Dickinson, Doris Day and (the late) Amanda Blake. And we all wore fake furs. I’m still involved, it’s a wonderful group.”

            She continues, “Darling, people can give you love and friendship – but no one is as devoted as a dog. A dog doesn’t care if I’m a Hollywood star, or an old retired Hollywood star. My son (she had one with Steve, and has three step sons) says, ‘Mom, you’re so spry, you ought to be proud of your age.’ So, here I am, 90 and proud! I just need a dog. I can’t stand living my life without one.”

©Steve Dale, Tribune Media Services