The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 79

I. A -4 liai-ril-lliliii mmLwm mm 11 -niifrfliiiflMiMmMi inn- fTTr 1 fliiniiniiirtiil by LLOYD SHEARER PARADE WEST COAST CORRESPONDENT Watching Audrey Meadows on television's The Honey mooners, playing the harried wife of Jackie Gleason, it's difficult to believe that this tall, talented redhead was once shy and painfully withdrawn. Before she was signed for Gleason's show (CBS-TV, Saturday nights), Audrey was known primarily as a glamorous singer. Today she is considered the personification of the hapless, harrassed, low-income American housewife. On video Audrey appears so flip, so forward that fright and insecurity seem the most unlikely qualities of her youth.

Nor does she appear the China-born daughter of an Episcopal missionary, or the best all-around girl athlete in show business. But all of this is true of Audrey Meadows. "I've led four lives," she explains. "The early years in China I hardly remember. By the time I was five the family was living in Providence, R.I.

One day I fell through a skylight and cut my leg horribly. "At first the doctors planned to amputate it. They didn't, but the surgery left plenty of scars." It was these scars on her left leg that made Audrey basically timid as an adolescent. "To avoid company I used to hide in my father's library and sit on my leg," she says. "When anyone asked a question, developed a deadpan expression to hide my true feelings'.

I wanted to become a newspaper reporter." But Audrey's older sister, Jayne, who's now married to TV comedian Steve Allen, had other ideas. Jayne decided that she and Audrey must become actresses. Since Audrey hero-worshipped her extroverted older sister, she went along with the idea. Together the Meadows Sisters moved to New York. They auditioned for singing jobs and got nowhere.

Finally, Al Evans, a musical conducter in New Jersey, hired Audrey "out of sympathy" at $35 a week. In this chorus job a director told her bluntly: "You look cold and blank. Why don't you get some expression into your face?" A Time for Audacity That remark stuck. "I woke up to the fact," Audrey says, "that there was no reason for being afraid of I decided to become audacious instead of living in a shell." Where she once detested auditions, Audrey began to welcome them. Gradually she became known as "the girl who can do anything or says she can." When Phil Silvers, for example, wanted a girl for Top Banana with a high, shrill singing voice, Audrey, auditioning for the role, said she was sure she could do it.

She hadn't the slightest idea of what Silvers had in mind. Then, in a burst of confidence, she sang. Crowed Silvers: "You're perfect." Four years ago Audrey heard that Jackie Gleason was casting the role of Alice Kramden, the bus-driver's wife in The lloneymooners. She called on Gleason, told him, "I know I can do it." Gleason smiled, then mumbled, "This girl is all wrong." Audrey went home, removed her make-up, got dressed like a household drudge. "I had photos taken and sent to Jackie.

He hired me on the spot." Since then, TV's most eligible bachelorette has won a weekly salary in four figures, a half-dozen awards as video's top supporting actress and a nationwide following of fans, many of whom are amazed at her off-stage glamor. In California a few weeks ago Audrey was stopped by an autograph hunter. "Sure is funny," said the fan. "On TV you look like a beaten dog. In real life you're a livin' doll." AWAY FROM THE CAMERA, athletic Audrey Meadows starts a Miami Beach vacation on water skis.

She also excels at golf, tennis, badminton, swimming. TV'S AUDREY MEADOWS: SHE WON OVER SHYNESS 4.