Susan Saint James, Emmy-winning star of “Kate & Allie” and “McMillan & Wife”, dies at 80
Susan Saint James receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008Credit: Charley Gallay/GettyKey Points
Susan Saint James has died at 80.
The Los Angeles-born star of series like McMillan & Wife and Kate & Allie died Monday, Oct. 26 of pancreatic cancer.
Saint James won an Emmy for her role as Peggy Maxwell on The Name of the Game, and largely retired after Kate & Allie wrapped in 1989.
Susan Saint James, the prolific, Emmy-winning star of series like The Name of the Game, McMillan & Wife, and Kate & Allie, has died. She was 80.
The actress died Monday, Oct. 26 of pancreatic cancer, her rep told Entertainment Weekly’s sister site PEOPLE.
In a statement, Saint James’ family remembered the star as someone who was “generous with her time and energy” and “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 continued. “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 statement concluded, “She brought that same fire and positivity to everything that followed, and never lost it. She is survived by her husband, Dick Ebersol, her four children–Sunshine Lucas, Harmony Lucas, Charlie Ebersol and Willie Ebersol–her seven grandchildren; her sister, Mary Mercedes Dewey, as well as her beloved service dog, Lola.”
Saint James had largely retired from show business after Kate & Allie wrapped its six-season run on CBS in 1989. But the impact of her trailblazing career still lives on, especially through the work of her niece, Shrinking star Christa Miller.
Born Susan Jane Miller in Los Angeles on Aug. 14, 1946, Saint James’ parents, a teacher and a film camera company executive, moved the family to Rockford, Ill., when she was still a girl. It was there the budding screen star grew up, getting her start as a model.
“I grew up on a river in Rockford, Ill.,” she told Bob Costas in 1980, at the height of her fame. “We had a TV, but my dad was waiting for them to perfect color, which is way into the ‘60s. We had one small black-and-white TV because he didn’t think color was here to stay, and movies were what you did. That was what you did.”
That ended being what Saint James did and did well. She struck gold with her very first screen role, which would become one of her signatures and the role that earned her the highest level of acclaim among her peers. Saint James was cast as Peggy Chan, the editorial assistant to Tony Franciosa’s investigative journalist Jeff Dillon in the 1966 made-for-TV movie Fame Is the Name of the Game. She reprised the role (under the tinkered name Peggy Maxwell) in the eventual series for which the film ended up serving as a pilot.
Saint James beat out Barbara Anderson on Ironside and Agnes Moorehead on Bewitched for the Primetime Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a series in 1969.
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Saint James appeared in a number of notable films over the course of her career, including 1968’s Where Angles Go, Trouble Follows, the sequel to Ida Lupino’s frothy nun comedy The Trouble With Angels, and Love at First Bite, a wild, New York City-set Dracula riff that released in 1979.
Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James for ‘Kate & Allie’Credit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty
But her home was on the small screen. Saint James followed up her The Name of the Game fame with single-episodes spots on McCloud and Alias Smith and Jones, eventually landing her next sizable part: Sally McMillan on the titular McMillan & Wife. The police procedural cast Saint James opposite Rock Hudson as a high-powered San Francisco couple who solve crimes by day and attend galas by night.
Saint James earned three more Emmy nominations for her performance in the role. In 2024, Saint James recalled Hudson’s teasing answer to her question of why he championed her over contenders like Jill Clayburgh and Diane Keaton for the series: “Years later, I asked Rock why he picked me. He said, ‘I was getting so fat from having lunch with actresses that I just decided to go with you!’”
Saint James would land her last plum role in 1984. She played Katherine “Kate” McArdle on Kate & Allie, a critics’ darling that netted Saint James two more Emmy nominations, across its series run through 1989. The actress starred opposite Jane Curtin, who won two back-to-back Emmys for her work on the single mothers sitcom.
The actress would largely retire from the spotlight after that series wrapped, though she did periodically return to grace the small screen, as in her 2011 appearance on Suits and her 2006 turn on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Beyond acting, Saint James married three times, sharing daughter Sunshine Lucas and son Harmony Lucas with makeup artist Thomas Lucas and three more sons with Saturday Night Live producer Dick Ebersol. Saint James and Ebersol were married in 1981, and in 2004, Dick and their sons, Charles and Teddy, crashed while aboard a private plane in Colorado. Dick and Charles survived, but Teddy died at age 14.
Saint James was a dedicated volunteer with the Special Olympics, and started a baby gift basket business with friend Barrie Johnson and her sister, Mercedes Dewey, in 1998. Her contributions to the entertainment industry were recognized in 2008 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Source: Entertainment
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