Anne Meara

The Redhead Who Didn't Want to Make People Laugh

Anne Meara arrived in New York determined to be a serious dramatic actress who breaks hearts on stage. By 1948, the summer theater circuit was her natural habitat, and it never crossed her mind that she would end up telling jokes on variety shows. But fate has a twisted sense of humor.

In 1953, she met Jerry Stiller in a casting agent's office. She walked out of an audition in tears, and he invited her to coffee to cheer her up. That encounter changed American comedy forever, because it gave birth to one of the most profitable partnerships on the small screen.

And the gamble paid off.

At first, she resisted working with her husband. She feared the marriage would fall apart if they shared scripts and a van during tours through the Midwest. But hunger and a lack of dramatic offers pushed her to accept. They formed the duo Stiller and Meara and began touring nightclubs where smoke and laughter mixed in equal measure.

The Business of Contrasts

In 1961, she decided to convert to Judaism after years of in-depth study. It wasn't due to script demands or family pressure. It was a spiritual decision that gave brutal authenticity to her sketches about couples from different religions. Her characters Mary Elizabeth Doyle and Hershey Shmoelowitz were based on that tension, which they knew all too well.

Her big break came in 1963 when they first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. They repeated the experience 36 times over the years. Audiences loved watching this tall, determined woman argue with a short, nervous man. They reflected the domestic tensions of the era, but with a layer of irony few dared to use.

But Anne wanted more than to be half of a joke.

In 1975, she starred in Kate McShane. It was the first television series in the United States centered on a criminal defense attorney who carried the entire weight of the plot. Critics respected it, but the ratings didn't follow. The network canceled the show after airing only ten episodes.

A Mother for the HBO Generation

During the 80s, she turned to theater and substantial supporting roles. In 1980, she joined the cast of Archie Bunker’s Place, where she played Veronica Rooney for three seasons. Her ability to deliver cutting lines without blinking remained intact despite the passing of time.

She never stopped working with her son, Ben Stiller. In 1987, she appeared in the short film The Hustler of Money and later had brief roles in movies like Zoolander from 2001. She didn't need big speeches to steal the scene from stars who earned ten times more than she did.

Many younger viewers discovered her in Sex and the City, playing Mary Walker between 2002 and 2004. She was Miranda's mother-in-law and suffered from the early stages of dementia. Meara played the role with a rawness free of the sentimentality that tends to plague older characters in modern fiction.

In 2010, she premiered a web series produced by her son in which she simply chatted with Jerry about current events from her living room. The format was rudimentary, and the jokes were the usual ones.

She died in Manhattan on May 23, 2015, at the age of 85.

Her death certificate doesn't mention that she won a Writers Guild Award for writing the TV movie The Other Woman in 1983.