She cracked cases alongside Rock Hudson, then shared a Greenwich Village brownstone with Jane Curtin, and when the work stopped being worth the juggling, she left series television behind and moved to a small Connecticut town to raise her children.
Pancreatic cancer claimed Susan Saint James, the Emmy-winning actress of “The Name of the Game,” “McMillan & Wife” and “Kate & Allie,” on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, at 80. A representative confirmed her death to People.
Her family said she prized her time and energy above money and steered both toward anyone who needed a lift, and that she raised her children to slow down and look after other people. “She never met a stranger,” the family said in a statement.
Dick Ebersol, four children and seven grandchildren survive her.
From Rockford to a Universal Contract
Susan Jane Miller was born in Los Angeles on Aug. 14, 1946, and grew up in Rockford, Ill., where her father had moved the family for work. She modeled in Paris as a teenager, and at 20 she returned to Los Angeles and signed a seven-year contract with Universal Studios.
She made her television debut in the 1966 movie “Fame Is the Name of the Game,” opposite Tony Franciosa. The spinoff, NBC’s 90-minute drama “The Name of the Game,” ran from 1968 to 1971 and cast her as Peggy Maxwell, a research assistant with a habit of being kidnapped. All three rotating leads employed her character: Franciosa’s reporter Jeff Dillon, Gene Barry’s publisher Glenn Howard and Robert Stack’s editor Dan Farrell.
The role won her the 1969 Emmy for supporting actress in a series.
She had a recurring role as the crook and love interest Charlene “Charlie” Brown on ABC’s “It Takes a Thief” with Robert Wagner, and appeared on “Ironside,” “McCloud” and “Alias Smith and Jones,” along with the 1968 film “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows.”
Killed Off in a Plane Crash
Saint James moved onto the NBC wheel series “McMillan & Wife” in 1971, alternating with “Columbo” and “McCloud” in the NBC Mystery Movie franchise. She played Sally McMillan, wife of Rock Hudson’s San Francisco police commissioner, and drew three Emmy nominations from the series.
She left after five seasons in a contract dispute. The producers killed off her character in a plane crash and stripped “& Wife” from the title. The series ended in 1977.
Films followed. She went on the run from the law with Peter Fonda in “Outlaw Blues” (1977), played Dracula’s quarry opposite George Hamilton in “Love at First Bite” (1979), joined a suburban heist with Jessica Lange and Curtin in “How to Beat the High Cost of Living” (1980), and played George Segal’s wife in “Carbon Copy” (1981), the film that introduced Denzel Washington.
The Guest-Hosting Gig That Became a Marriage
Everything after 1981 turned on a guest-hosting turn she took on “Saturday Night Live.” Dick Ebersol, then the show’s executive producer and later the chairman of NBC Sports, met her there, and the two married barely six weeks afterward. Ebersol was her third husband.
Three sons, Charlie, Willie and Teddy, came of a marriage that ran 45 years. An earlier marriage, to makeup artist Tom Lucas, had given her a daughter, Sunshine, and a son, Harmony. She filed for divorce in 2002 and reconciled with Ebersol later that year. “We had a second chance,” she told People magazine in 2002, adding, “I’m amazingly happier, so that’s a good sign.”
In his 2022 memoir, Ebersol called her “the greatest partner I’ve ever had by far.”
Two Divorcees, One Brownstone, Six Seasons
“Kate & Allie,” created by Sherry Coben, premiered on CBS on March 19, 1984, and paired Saint James’ free-spirited Kate McArdle with Curtin’s straight-laced Allie Lowell. The two played divorced childhood friends raising three children in a shared Greenwich Village brownstone. The show ran six seasons before its 1989 cancellation. Saint James earned two lead actress Emmy nominations for it, and Curtin won the award twice.
Saint James largely retired from acting after the series ended and settled in Litchfield, Conn., to raise her children.
She returned occasionally, playing the mother of her look-alike niece, Christa Miller, on “The Drew Carey Show,” and turning up on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and USA Network’s “Suits.” In 1998 she co-founded Seedling and Pip, a baby gift basket business focused on books and based in Litchfield, Conn., with her sister Mercedes Dewey and a friend.
A Eulogy Written as a Note
The family spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles in 2004, and on the way home the pilot of their private plane set down in Colorado to let Saint James off at the family’s second home. The plane crashed on takeoff for Indiana on Nov. 28, 2004, in snowy weather at Montrose, Colo. Her youngest son, 14-year-old Edward “Teddy” Ebersol, died, as did the pilot and a flight attendant. Ebersol and their son Charlie came through the crash with serious injuries.
What she did next is, to her family, the act that defines her. She gave Teddy’s eulogy weeks after his death, and she had written it as a note addressed to her husband and to each of her other children. Tim Russert, the NBC News anchor, interviewed her days after the crash, and she thanked everyone who had reached out and said the family was all right.
She volunteered for the Special Olympics for years and served on its board of directors. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in June 2008.
Curtin paid tribute in a statement on Tuesday, Oct. 27. “We lost a decent person today. Susan St. James was a decent person who made Kate and Allie a joy,” she said, later adding: “Susan was my friend and working with her brought such laughter, community and family to the stage at the Ed Sullivan theater. I’ll miss her.”
