US television star Susan Saint James has died at the age of 80, prompting tributes from colleagues including Jamie Lee Curtis. The Los Angeles-born actress, known for roles in Kate & Allie and McMillan & Wife, died on Monday 26 October after being diagnosed with cancer, according to a family representative quoted by People.
Career highlights and final role
Saint James rose to fame in the 1970s playing the wife of Rock Hudson's character in McMillan & Wife, and later starred alongside Jane Curtin in the 1980s series Kate & Allie. She received three Emmy nominations for her work on The Name Of The Game, winning once, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Her final role was in an episode of the legal drama Suits in 2011, the series that brought Meghan Markle global fame.
Family statement and Jamie Lee Curtis tribute
A family representative's statement said: "She taught her children to pause, be kind and look out for other people. 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."
The statement also recalled how, weeks after losing her youngest son Teddy in a plane crash on 28 November 2004, she delivered his eulogy as a note to her other children and her husband. "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."
Jamie Lee Curtis paid tribute, recalling how she was compared to Saint James early in her career. Curtis wrote: "When Monique James, the woman that ran the programme, announced that she had signed me to a seven-year contract she said, and I remember it, 'I haven't felt the same spirit and energy in someone since we signed Susan Saint James'."
Curtis added: "She was a beautiful mother and sister and auntie and grandma Gigi and friend and wife to her beloved husband, Dick Ebersol, and together they suffered the unimaginable loss of their son, Teddy, who died at 14 in an airplane accident. I always considered her a bit of a spirit guide and good friend through the often turbulent waters of the entertainment business. She was a very special woman and will be greatly missed. To her family and friends, My Hand In Yours."
Personal life and family loss
Saint James was married to scriptwriter Richard Neubert from 1967 to 1968, and to make-up artist Tom Lucas from 1971 to 1977, with whom she had daughter Sunshine and son Harmony. While hosting Saturday Night Live in 1981, she met television executive Dick Ebersol, the show's executive producer, and they married that same year. Together they had three children: Charles, William and Edward, known as Teddy.
In November 2002, Teddy died at the age of 14 when a private jet carrying him, Dick and Charles crashed during an attempted take-off in Colorado. Captain Luis Polanco and flight attendant Warren T. Richardson III were also killed. Dick and Charles, along with the first officer, survived but were both badly injured.
