McShane,” which, though short-lived, had the distinction of being the first network drama to feature a woman lawyer.
She made her off-Broadway debut in 1971 in John Guare’s award-winning play “The House of Blue Leaves.” A quarter-century later, she made her off-Broadway bow as a playwright with her comedy-drama, “After-Play.”
Meara was an aspiring 23-year-old actress in 1953 when she responded to a “cattle call” by a New York agent casting for summer stock.
After the agent chased her around his office, she burst into the waiting room, crying and out of breath, where she found Stiller, a fellow out-of-work actor then 25.
“I took her out for coffee,” Stiller recalled decades later for The Associated Press. “She seemed to sense I had no money, so she just ordered coffee. Then she took all the silverware. I picked up her check for 10 cents and thought, ‘This is a girl I’d like to hang out with.’” Within a few months, they were wed.
But this was a mixed marriage — referring to their respective families, Meara said, “Nobody was thrilled when we got married, absolutely nobody.” But they accepted it, she added.
Despite her theater background, Meara, with her bright eyes and cheeky smile, was a quick study as a comedian when she and Stiller performed in improv groups. Her ability to adapt was all the more remarkable since, back then, “I was down on comedians. Growing up, I loved drama and fantasies. I hated the Marx Brothers. I took all that confusion seriously.”
The couple had an old-fashioned appeal not unlike that of Burns and Allen, but Stiller and Meara were thick into the 1950s Beat Generation, an edgy, innovative arts scene based in New York’s Greenwich Village, where they had an apartment. “But WE thought that when the Village was REALLY happening was in the ‘20s, the F. Scott Fitzgerald days, before our time,” she said. “People never know what’s going on while it’s happening. You think, during the Renaissance, people called it ‘The Renaissance’?”
The husband-and-wife act was born of desperation shortly after the birth of their first child, Amy, in 1961. There still was insufficient work in legitimate theater, and improv wasn’t paying the bills.
As Stiller and Meara, they drew on their own lives and the world they saw around them for laughs. They created routines and began touring, as well as landing gigs in coffee houses.
Then, in 1963, Stiller and Meara struck gold. They snagged a booking on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” CBS’ top-rated Sunday night variety show.