'HONEYMOONERS' AUDREY MEADOWS DIES OF LUNG CANCER.

Byline: Ray Richmond and Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writers

Actress Audrey Meadows, whose deadpan retorts to screen husband Jackie Gleason on the 1950's comedy "The Honeymooners" earned her television immortality, died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, family members said Sunday.

Meadows died at 8:50 p.m. Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized since Jan. 24. Family members were at her side.

According to her nephew Bill Allen she would have turned 70 Thursday, although reference books put her age at 71.

"My fervent prayers are with my dear sister, Audrey, who has for months fought a brave and private battle with lung cancer," said Meadows' older sister, Jayne Meadows Allen, in a statement.

"As her struggle has come to an end, I hope all of you who were touched by her work on "The Honeymooners" will join our family in prayers and hold her forever in your hearts."

Meadows kept her illness secret even from family members until tabloid newspapers learned of her hospitalization last month.

Meadows was a regular from 1952 to '55 on "The Jackie Gleason Show" and assumed the role of Alice Kramden - the long-suffering wife of blustery New York City bus driver Ralph Kramden (Gleason) - on "The Honeymooners," which spun out of a sketch originated on DuMont's "Cavalcade of Stars" in 1951.

While Meadows wasn't the only actress to portray Alice, she gained the most fame. Pert Kelton preceded her in the role, and Sheila MacRae followed her.

But it was Meadows who made Alice her own in the 39 "Honeymooners" episodes that represent the bulk of the show's life. It ran for just one season as a series in its own right (in 1955-56), but has been rerun endlessly since.

She won an Emmy for the role in 1954.

"The Honeymooners" was Meadows' shining moment, showcasing her impeccable chemistry and comic timing with Gleason.

While living in a spartan Brooklyn apartment, Alice Kramden was constantly forced to put up with her husband's harebrained schemes and loudmouthed rants that often concluded with his fist-shaking shouts of "One day, Alice . . . pow! Right in the kisser!"

Ralph also regularly roared, "To the moon, Alice!" - and he wasn't talking about space flight.

But through it all, Meadows held her own with the imposing and charismatic Gleason, and her alter ego Alice gave as good as she got. She scarcely broke a sweat no matter how loud her husband's tirades. Many shows ended with hugs and Ralph's admission, "Baby, you're the greatest."

A "Honeymooners" memoir by Meadows, "Love, Alice," was published in 1994. In an Associated Press interview that year, she described Alice's special appeal, and Ralph's.

"I loved that character of Alice, because she was strong and she was tender. She was everything that I think is fine in a woman," she said. "Why did she stay with Ralph? Because she understood him - and he obviously was thin when she married him."

Meadows, whose parents were Episcopalian missionaries in China, was born in New York in 1926 during one of their trips to the United States, Allen said.

Meadows was fluent only in Chinese when the family settled in the United States in the 1930s. Her sister Jayne, wife of humorist Steve Allen, convinced Audrey to join her in a Broadway fling when they were in their teens.

That would ultimately lead to Audrey's playing Carnegie Hall as a coloratura soprano, an opera gig and a role on Broadway with Phil Silvers in "Top Banana" in 1951.

Meadows - who was born Audrey Cotter - borrowed her paternal grandmother's maiden name as her stage moniker, and Jayne did likewise, Bill Allen said.

Meadows performed as a singer and sketch comedy player with the comedy team Bob and Ray in a pair of TV projects before hooking up with Gleason.

Meadows' career in acting would prove relatively short, however.

She played bit parts on TV dramas and worked as a panelist on quiz shows like "What's in a Name?" and "What's Going On?" throughout the 1950s and early '60s.

She married Continental Airlines Chairman Robert Six, turning her attention to charitable endeavors and world travel. She lived in Beverly Hills.

The Meadows sisters could converse in the Mandarin Chinese they learned as children, and Audrey "was a great collector of Chinese art," Allen said.

Jayne, who appears in the TV sitcom "High Society," spent five days at her sister's bedside.

Meadows was a longtime cigarette smoker, Allen said. She had been despondent recently over the death of her brother Edward Cotter in mid-January.

However, "She was really optimistic up until the end that she would get better and work again," he said.

Aside from the occasional "Honeymooners" reunion show or "Love Boat" appearance and a role on the short-lived sitcom "Too Close for Comfort" in 1982-83, Meadows was content to remain off the Hollywood fast track for most of the past 30 years.

Her husband died in 1986 at age 79.

Meadows also is survived by her sister-in-law Marjorie Cotter, nephews Christopher Cotter and Steven Cotter; nieces Cynthia Cotter and Ellen McGoldrick; and 10 grandnephews and grandnieces.

The funeral will be private. In lieu of flowers, family members asked that donations be made in Meadows' name to two favorite charities: the American Red Cross and Friends of the Children, which supports MacLaren Hall, the Los Angeles County home for abused and neglected children.

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(1) Audrey Meadows, arms folded, is best-known for her role as Alice Kramden on TV's "The Honeymooners." Associated Press (2 -- color) Audrey Meadows Started career as singer