Susan Saint James, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 80, was a major star on US television for two decades, shooting to worldwide fame alongside Rock Hudson in the police drama McMillan & Wife and playing one of two divorced single mums in the female “odd couple” sitcom Kate & Allie.
Saint James was cast as McMillan’s wife, Sally, after being spotted in a 1970 episode of another crime series, McCloud, playing a police officer on the trail of a serial killer. The role of Stewart McMillan, or “Mac”, a debonair San Francisco police commissioner, was Hudson’s first in a TV series after more than two decades as a movie heart-throb in Hollywood’s so-called golden age, alongside sex symbols such as Gina Lollobrigida and Doris Day. The husky-voiced Saint James more than held her own in the show, in which she starred for five years from 1971.
