Susan St James died on Monday at age 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. A representative told People on Tuesday, putting a firm date on the loss of an Emmy-winning television actress whose work on Kate & Allie and McMillan & Wife reached viewers over years of network TV.
People on Tuesday
The family statement named Dick Ebersol as her surviving husband, along with four children, seven grandchildren, her sister Mary Mercedes Dewey, and her service dog Lola. It also described her as generous with her time and energy, and said she taught her children to pause, be kind and look out for other people.
Her death lands with extra weight because Saint James was not a one-role performer. She won one Emmy for The Name of the Game after three nominations, then picked up three more Emmy nominations for McMillan & Wife. That run is why her name still carries real network-era value: she was not just visible, she was repeatedly rewarded by the Academy pipeline that defined television prestige in that period.
McMillan & Wife
She also told Yahoo in 2015 about the practical side of the job, saying, “We did a pilot one year and then worked together almost five and a half years, except that they went on a year without me”. That detail matters because it shows how long a single series could hold an actor in place when network television still built careers around multi-season commitments.
Saint James first moved to Hollywood at 20, after changing her last name to Saint James, signed a weekly contract with Universal, and appeared in Where Angels Go and Trouble Follows before landing The Name of the Game in 1968. Her later arc had a twist: she stayed with McMillan & Wife for five seasons until her character’s death, a rare on-screen exit for a performer so closely identified with television success.
Tom Lucas and Dick Ebersol
She married Richard Neubert in 1967, then Tom Lucas in 1971, and the marriage to Lucas ended in 1977. In 1981, while hosting Saturday Night Live, she met Dick Ebersol after rehearsal, then later told People, “I knew I was going to take down my old boyfriends’ pictures and ask him what he wanted for breakfast,” a line that captures how quickly her private life moved into its next chapter.
For readers tracking why this death resonates beyond nostalgia, the answer is simple: Saint James was a durable television figure whose career stretched from The Name of the Game to Kate & Allie, and her family now says the people around her have lost the person who made each room feel centered on others. The unresolved part is the medical timeline; the public record here ends with her death on Monday and the family’s statement on Tuesday.
