Emmy winner Susan Saint James, known for ‘Kate & Allie’ and ‘McMillan & Wife,’ died at 80 after pancreatic cancer, a loss for classic TV fans.
Fox News reported the actress died Monday after a battle with the disease, with details first carried by People magazine and material from the Associated Press.
A family representative described a woman who put others first even in crushing grief. Saint James built a career on network television, then largely left Hollywood to raise her children and support charity work.
She is survived by her husband, longtime NBC executive Dick Ebersol, four children, seven grandchildren, her sister, and her service dog Lola.
Saint James started in modeling before moving into television. In 1968 she landed the breakthrough role of research assistant Peggy Maxwell on NBC’s “The Name of the Game.”
She won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1969 for that part. From 1971 to 1976 she starred as Sally McMillan opposite Rock Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner on “McMillan & Wife.”
She left the NBC series before its sixth and final season in a contract dispute. Producers killed off her character in a plane crash.
In 1984 she returned to series television on CBS as the co-lead of “Kate & Allie” with Jane Curtin. The sitcom ran through 1989 and fixed her place with a new generation of viewers.
Breitbart noted her Emmy-winning run and multiple nominations while co-starring with Hudson and Curtin, underscoring how firmly those two shows defined her public life.
Film and guest work included “Love at First Bite,” “How to Beat the High Cost of Living,” “M*A*S*H,” “Law & Order: SVU,” and “Suits.” After “Kate & Allie” ended she stepped back from the industry, concentrating on family and the Special Olympics.
Readers following recent entertainment losses have seen similar goodbyes, including coverage of Tom Skerritt, the Top Gun and Alien actor, dying at 93.
Saint James met Ebersol in 1981 while hosting “Saturday Night Live.” She had earlier marriages to Richard Neubert and makeup artist Tom Lucas.
On November 28, 2004, the couple’s youngest son, 14-year-old Teddy, died in a private plane crash in Colorado. The representative told People how Saint James answered that blow.
The representative said:
"Her defining act: weeks after losing her youngest son, Teddy, in the November 28, 2004 plane crash, she delivered his eulogy as a note to each of her other children and her husband, giving them words to heal. Even in the deepest grief of her life, she put everyone else first. Days after the crash she sat with Tim Russert to thank the people who had reached out and to tell them the family was okay."
The same statement continued:
"She brought that same fire and positivity to everything that followed, and never lost it."
Another passage captured the everyday warmth friends and strangers saw:
"She never met a stranger. Every person she met became the most important person in the room at that moment, from a fellow board member to the clerk at the shoe store, who usually walked away knowing her entire life story."
Surviving children named in the report are Sunshine Lucas, Harmony Lucas, Charlie Ebersol, and Willie Ebersol. Her sister is Mary Mercedes Dewey.
Other recent goodbyes in the same vein include the death of country singer Brian “Nashville” Duckworth at 56, a reminder of how often audiences now mark the passing of familiar voices.
Classic television has absorbed multiple losses of late. The New York Post reported that “General Hospital” actress Joan Benedict died at 96 from stroke complications after a career that also spanned stage and prime-time guest roles.
Saint James’s own choice to leave the business for home and the Special Olympics stands in contrast to the usual Hollywood script of endless reinvention.
Fans tracking public-family tragedies have also read of Kyle Kennedy, RFK’s granddaughter, dying at 42 after a long medical fight.
The same audiences following actress obituaries may recall earlier notices such as prior coverage of Saint James’s career and passing.
In a business that rarely stops selling the next project, she treated marriage, children, and quiet charity as the main event. That record outlasts any ratings chart.
