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| The Renaissance Woman |
William Edelen |
We have often heard of Renaissance men, but seldom of Renaissance women, and almost never of a Renaissance couple. My Webster's Dictionary defines a "Renaissance man" in these words: "A person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas." Few men have ever fit that description more perfectly than Steve Allen. And when you include his wife Jayne Meadows, a Renaissance woman by any definition, into the mix, cosmic energy just goes off the chart.
If you are looking for a role model couple who perfectly illustrate the Yin and Yang of complementary opposites, you have it in Steve and Jayne. We all know about Steve, but Jayne, where do I begin?
An Emmy-award winner in 1990, and four-time Emmy nominee. A Broadway star in her teens who went on to star in six more Broadway shows.
In 1990 she won the International Platform Association Award for her one-woman show Powerful Women In History. She recently received the Susan B. Anthony Award.
And in one of the most magnificent television shows ever produced, the award-winning Meeting of Minds, Jayne wrote and performed the epic characters: Marie Antoinette, Cleopatra, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Catherine the Great, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger and the 90-year-old Florence Nightingale.
As a writer she wrote the teleplay for a segment of Fantasy Island, and her first play, The Eternal Bed, was produced in Los Angeles in 1994. She also wrote a column for Carte Blanche magazine for five years.
She has played major roles on stage and screen with Katharine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Robert Montgomery, David Niven, Tyrone Power, William Powell and Myrna Loy. She had appearances with Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Red Skelton, Bob Hope and the Smothers Brothers. She and husband Steve went on tour in 1995, with Love Letters, a two character play.
Space limitations preclude my continuing on for ten more pages just listing all of her brilliant accomplishments.
Now I must tell you about one of the joys of my life. I had Jayne for an entire wonderful hour of conversation, without having to share her with anyone. Here is how it happened. I have a regular radio show in Palm Springs, California. It is called Edelen's World. The station is owned by the people who publish the Palm Springs Life magazine. Recently I had Jayne for the entire hour of the show as my guest. I lost count of the letters and phone calls that poured in following the program saying: "Fantastic. . . wonderful. . . marvelous."
Well, I thought, naturally. Jayne's energy and personality and enthusiasm and inner beauty just literally poured right through the microphone out into the homes and cars of this beautiful eternal desert.
Jayne and I talked about: "Shoes and ships and sealing wax . . . and cabbages and kings . . ." and many other subjects close to both of our hearts. What a joy to share some of our conversation with you now.
I tell you the truth: the hour spent with Jayne was all joy. Now to give you a flavor of our conversation. I am BE (Bill Edelen) and Jayne is JM.
| BE: |
Jayne, I have been so looking forward to this radio interview today that I even went out and got a haircut and put on my best pair of shorts and sport shirt. |
| JM: |
Well, me too. I set my hair, and put on lipstick and false eyelashes just for you. |
| BE: |
Your bio leaves me breath less. How did it all happen? |
| JM: |
I was born and raised in China, and my parents were missionaries. My mother was the dearest, sweetest angel. She didn't talk; she sang. She was a tower of strength. A backbone of steel. My father was a good preacher and had a little bit of drama. I would write plays for my grandmother, who was stone deaf, my mother and the dog, that was our audience. Audrey, two years younger, did not like plays and would just cry all the way through the play. |
| BE: |
Being in theater, did you feel that you have had a lot to overcome, being a woman? |
| JM: |
Yes, I have had a lot to over come. The best people I know have had a lot of obstacles to overcome. But I have had this tremendous energy. I just loved and love life. I love it today. I never want to die, so I have never stopped. I used to tell our son and my stepson how we used to walk five miles a day to get the bus to ride almost an other hour to get to school, and this was in New En gland where the snow drifts would be so high you couldn't see over them. They would say: "Yes, we've heard that story before." |
| BE: |
You and Steve must have some kind of secret vitamins to keep you as enthusiastic as you are. |
| JM: |
There is only one secret. To love what you are doing. |
| BE: |
From that comes the enthusiasm? |
| JM: |
The energy and the joy. |
| BE: |
To me, Jayne, one of the greatest shows ever produced on television was your Meeting of the Minds. Just magnificent. |
| JM: |
You know, Bill, I have had the greatest success of my life with the Meeting of the Minds. A woman came to Steve about lecturing, but he was too expensive. So she spoke to me and I said what on earth would I speak about, and she said, those women. And so I did, and I tell the audience about the beauty and excitement that I had in researching those women. And this is just Jayne talking to the audience. I never look at a note. I just roam the stage. The people do not want to leave. When I did Margaret Sanger I got a letter from one of her sons. He said that I looked like his mother . . . I sounded like his mother. |
| BE: |
Jayne, we must talk about one more subject. How can two such brilliant and talented people, you and Steve, make a marriage work, complement each other, with no clash of egos, and total respect for each other? |
| JM: |
There is no secret. People are always asking for a secret. They want me to give them a pill to take. A pill to make it easy. It's tough. Marriage, even the best marriages are tough. But, the thing you said about being equally talented. This is important. We are not equally talented. Steve is enormously talented. I cannot write music. I cannot play the piano. I never say a funny thing intentionally. My strength is acting, and that is not his. So we are not really in competition. I respect his talents, even as he does mine. We work well together. That is rare. I think that intellectually we are on a pretty good level. I enjoy his thoughts. Steve is very quiet, even shy. I am very gregarious. So, opposites. |
| BE: |
That is what Yin and Yang is all about, complementary opposites. |
| JM: |
We are absolute opposites, except that we have great love of family, great love of the arts, and great love of country. |
| BE: |
Jayne, one last word. What distresses me today is how the plug is being pulled in Washington on culture; the National Endowment for the Arts, Public Radio, broad casting and the humanities. It is distressing. |
| JM: |
Doesn't that say a lot about how cultured they are in Washington? |
| BE: |
Absolutely. There could not be a more revealing commentary. We are at rock bot tom on support of the arts internationally. One of the lowest in the world, and yet we are one of the wealthiest nations. We spend three billion on one airplane. I say, show me an individual's check stubs, or a nation's and I will give you an accurate profile of their values and their priorities. |
Jayne, this has been a great, great joy. What a wonderful couple you and Steve are . . . and Jayne, especially, what a beautiful lovely spirit you are. It is like a fountain bursting from within you. Thank you, Jayne.
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