Susan Saint James, the actress best known for her starring roles in “McMillan & Wife” and “Kate & Allie,” died Monday at age 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, People magazine reported.
A representative described her as someone who treated everyone she met as important, “from a fellow board member to the clerk at the shoe store, who usually walked away knowing her entire life story.”
“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.”
“She brought that same fire and positivity to everything that followed, and never lost it,” the statement continued.
Saint James started out as a model before moving into television. Her big break came in 1968 when she was cast as research assistant Peggy Maxwell on NBC’s “The Name of the Game,” a role that won her a Primetime Emmy Award in 1969 and made her one of the small screen’s rising names.
She reached her greatest fame as Sally McMillan opposite Rock Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner Stewart McMillan in “McMillan & Wife,” which ran from 1971 to 1976. She left the show before its sixth and final season amid a contract dispute, and her character was written off in a plane crash.
Saint James found a second wave of success in the 1980s alongside Jane Curtin in the CBS sitcom “Kate & Allie,” which aired from 1984 to 1989. Her other credits include “Love at First Bite,” “How to Beat the High Cost of Living,” “M*A*S*H,” “Law & Order: SVU” and “Suits.”
Off screen, Saint James was married to longtime NBC executive and former “Saturday Night Live” producer Dick Ebersol, whom she met while hosting the comedy show in 1981. The couple’s 14-year-old son, Teddy, died in a private plane crash in Colorado in 2004. She was previously married to Richard Neubert and makeup artist Tom Lucas.
She is survived by her husband, her four children — Sunshine Lucas, Harmony Lucas, Charlie Ebersol and Willie Ebersol — her seven grandchildren, her sister Mary Mercedes Dewey, and her service dog, Lola.
After “Kate & Allie” ended, Saint James largely stepped back from Hollywood to focus on her family and charitable work, including her longtime involvement with the Special Olympics.
