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LOS ANGELES — Susan Saint James, who co-starred with Rock Hudson in the 1970s TV crime series “McMillan & Wife” and later co-starred with Jane Curtin in the sitcom “Kate & Allie” in the 1980s, has died. She was 80.
People magazine, citing a representative for the actor, said St. James died Monday. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“She never met a stranger,” her family said in a statement to People. “Everyone she met became the most important person in the room at that time, from another board member to the shoe store clerk, who usually walked away knowing her entire life history.”
Susan Jane Miller was born on August 14, 1946, in Los Angeles, she was raised in the city of Rockford in northern Illinois, where her father had moved to work. She started modeling as a teenager in Paris.
At 20, she moved back to Los Angeles and landed a seven-year contract with Universal Studios. She made her television debut in the 1966 film “Fame is the Name of the Game” with Tony Franciosa.
She got another break when she became a series called “The Name of the Game” in 1968, with rotating main characters played by Franciosa, Gene Barry and Robert Stack. Saint James continued the show in her role as Peggy Maxwell, a research assistant working for the three men. She won an Emmy Award for the role in 1969.
Before “The Name of the Game”, Saint James had a recurring role in the crime series “It Takes a Thief” with Robert Wagner. Her other early TV credits included “Ironside,” “McCloud” and “Alias Smith and Jones.” In 1980, she was a guest in an episode of “M*A*S*H.”
Saint James, known for her unique throaty voice, had a supporting role in the 1968 film “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows” starring Rosalind Russell and Stella Stevens.
She gained her greatest fame as Sally McMillan, the troubled wife of Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner, Stuart McMillan, in the hit series “McMillan & Wife” from 1971-76. She received three Emmy nominations for the role.
Saint James left the NBC show before its sixth and final season due to a contract dispute, with her character killed in a plane crash. St. James then turned to feature films.
She starred opposite Peter Fonda in “Outlaw Blues” in 1977. She co-starred with George Hamilton in the 1979 vampire spoof “Love at First Bite” and joined Jessica Lange and Curtin in the 1980 comedy film “How to Beat the High Cost of Living.” She co-starred in the 1981 romantic comedy “Carbon Copy”, in which Denzel Washington made his film debut.
After moderate success on the big screen, St. James reunited with Curtin in the CBS sitcom “Kate & Allie,” which ran from 1984-89 and earned Saint James two Emmy nominations as Kate’s cheap to Allie straight Curtin.
While hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 1981, St. James met Dick Ebersol, the show’s executive producer at the time and future chairman of NBC Sports. They married almost six weeks after meeting and had three sons, Charles, William and Teddy.
Teddy died at the age of 14 in a private plane crash in 2004 that killed the pilot and a flight attendant; Ebersol and Charles survived with serious injuries.
The family had spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles and planned to make several stops on the return trip. The flight first landed in Colorado, where St. James got off to go to the family’s second home. He collapsed after leaving again for Indiana in snowy weather.
Her family’s statement describes the loss: “Her defining act: weeks after losing her youngest son, Teddy, in a November 28, 2004 plane crash, she delivered my tribute as a note to each of her other children and her husband, giving them words to heal him. Even in the deepest sorrow of her life, she put everyone else first.”
Saint James filed for divorce from Ebersol in 2002, but reconciled later that year. “We had a second chance,” she told People magazine in 2002. “I’m really happy, so that’s a good sign.”
In his 2022 memoir “From Saturday Night to Sunday Night,” Ebersol called Saint James “the greatest partner I’ve ever had in a long time.
She resigned when “Kate & Allie” ended, choosing to focus on raising her younger children in Litchfield, Connecticut, while Ebersol took the executive job at NBC Sports.
St. James made occasional guest appearances after that, including as the mother of her niece, Christa Miller, on “The Drew Carey Show,” as well as “Law & Command: Special Victims Unit” and “Suits.” In 1999, she starred in a production of “The Miracle Worker” in Torrington, Connecticut.
In 1998, Saint James, her sister, Mercedes Dewey, and a friend founded Seedling and Pip, a book-focused baby gift basket business based in Litchfield, Connecticut.
She was a longtime supporter of the Special Olympics, volunteering and serving on its board of directors.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by daughter Sunshine and son Harmony from her second marriage to makeup artist Tom Lucas, with whom she remained friends; sons Charlie and Willie with Ebersol; and Miller, whose TV debut was on “Kate & Allie.” St. James’s first marriage to Richard Neubert ended in divorce.
