Audrey Meadows was an American actress born as Audrey Cotter on 8th February 1922 in New York City, and will be best remembered for her role in the 1950s TV comedy “The Honeymooners”, as housewife Alice Kramden. She passed away in 1996.
Have you ever wondered how rich Audrey Meadows was? According to celebrity dot money, it has been estimated that Meadows’ net worth was three million dollars, accumulated through a notable acting career, primarily during the 1950s and 1960s. Her role in the popular TV show “The Honeymooners” brought her great popularity and significantly increased her net worth.
Audrey Meadows Net Worth $3 Million
Audrey was the youngest of four children in the family; her parents had been Episcopal missionaries in China, where her siblings had been born. A year before Audrey was born, her parents returned to the USA and settled in New York. Meadows went to Barrington School for Girls in Great Barrington Massachusetts, and decided to pursue an acting career upon graduation. Her first engagements included singing in Broadway musicals such as “Top Banana”. She then landed a regular television role in “The Bob and Ray Show”, and soon after in “The Jackie Gleason Show”, in which she starred as Alice, a role which she later continued in “The Honeymooners” when it became a regular situation comedy of a half-hour on CBS. When the show’s creator, Jackie Gleason produced the Honeymooners specials in the 1970s, Meadows auditioned for the role of Alice but was initially turned down due to her chic and pretty looks. However, after submitting a completely different photo of herself in which she looked much plainer, she won the role. Her portrayal of Alice was probably the most impressionable, as she became more associated with the character than any other actor who played the role. She reprised her role in other shows as well, including “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Jack Benny Program”. Audrey earned a large amount of money thanks to her brother Edward, a lawyer, who had previously inserted a clause into her contract with the producers of the “Honeymooners”, where he stated she would be paid in case of the show’s rebroadcast. Since the series did eventually start airing in reruns, Meadows earned millions of dollars in return.
When it comes to her career after this show, Audrey co-operated with director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast her in several of his “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat” series, and several other TV variety shows, series and feature films. During the ‘80s she was mostly seen in situation comedies such as “Too Close for Comfort”. Later, she even had an impact in “The Simpsons” in the episode “Old Money”, voicing the character of Grandpa Simpson’s girlfriend, Bea Simmons. Her net worth was still rising.
Apart from her fruitful career in the entertainment industry, Meadows also had a marketing and banking career – she served as director of the First National Bank of Denver, becoming the first woman to hold this position. Also, for twenty years she worked as an advisory director of Continental Airlines, retiring in 1981.
In October 1994, Audrey published “Love, Alice: My Life As A Honeymooner” – her memoirs, and only two years later, after being diagnosed with lung cancer, she died in Beverly Hills, California, five days before her 74th birthday on 3rd February 1996 in, USA.
Privately, Meadows was married twice, firstly to real estate man Randolph Rouse from 1956 to ’58, and then Robert F. “Bob” Six from 1961 to ‘86.
