How did Susan Saint James die?
Susan Saint James
August 14, 1946 — October 26, 2026
Susan Saint James died on October 26, 2026, aged 80. The official cause of death was metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Susan Jane Miller was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and was modeling in Paris as a teenager. At twenty she signed a seven-year contract with Universal, renamed herself Susan Saint James, and within two years had an Emmy, for playing Peggy Maxwell, the sharp research assistant on The Name of the Game. She was Sally McMillan opposite Rock Hudson on McMillan & Wife for five years, walked away over a contract dispute (they killed her character off in a plane crash), and in the 1980s was Kate to Jane Curtin's Allie on Kate & Allie, one of the first sitcoms built around two divorced women raising kids together. She was eighty when she died.
She met Dick Ebersol, then the executive producer of Saturday Night Live, when she guest-hosted the show in 1981, and married him about six weeks later. They had three sons. In November 2004 the youngest, Teddy, who was fourteen, was killed when the family's chartered plane crashed on takeoff in Colorado; Dick and their son Charlie survived. She spent much of the rest of her life working for the Special Olympics, where she served on the board, and running a baby-gift business she founded with her sister in Connecticut.
She is survived by her husband, her sons Charlie and Willie, and her children Sunshine and Harmony from her second marriage.
Photos with Susan
If you met her, this is where that photo goes. No one has added one yet.
The record
What is established, from the authorities and the people who were there.
Official cause: Metastatic pancreatic cancer (family statement via People, October 2026; death certificate, reported November 6, 2026)
She died on Monday, October 26, 2026, at the age of 80. Her representative confirmed the death to People magazine, and her family said she had pancreatic cancer. "She never met a stranger," the family said.
On November 6, a copy of her death certificate reported by Cover Media listed the cause as metastatic pancreatic cancer, with an interval of "months" between onset and death.
What happened
The cause of death has been confirmed. The theories below are how readers understand it, and what people thought before it was known. Everyone here is anonymous.
Her family said pancreatic cancer, and the certificate says it had spread, over months. Why is pancreatic cancer so often found late, and what does "metastatic" mean for how her last months went?
The page creator
- Confirmed29 of 30 readers find this likely
Metastatic pancreatic cancer, over a period of months
Her family named pancreatic cancer when she died, and the death certificate says it had spread and had been there for months. There is no question about what happened; the page is here for the people who loved her work and want to understand it.
Anonymous.
Confirmed by her family in October 2026 and by the death certificate reported November 6, 2026.
The confirmed cause carries this mark and stays at the top. Theories can still be added; they sort below it.
The pancreas sits deep in the abdomen, behind the stomach, and an early tumor there usually causes no symptoms anyone would notice. By the time people feel something (back or stomach pain, weight loss, yellowing of the skin from a blocked bile duct, new diabetes), the cancer has often spread. That is why it is one of the deadliest common cancers: only about one in eight people diagnosed in the United States are alive five years later, and far fewer when it is found after spreading.
"Metastatic" means the cancer had spread beyond the pancreas, most often to the liver. At that stage treatment aims to extend and ease life rather than cure. An interval of "months" on the certificate means the disease was known for some time before she died, not sudden.
Family statement and representative, via People (reported by the Associated Press, October 27, 2026) Cover Media, report on the death certificate, November 6, 2026 (via Rova) Wikipedia, "Susan Saint James" American Cancer Society, pancreatic cancer survival statistics
Questions people ask
- What was Susan Saint James's cause of death?
- The official cause of death was metastatic pancreatic cancer.
- When did Susan Saint James die?
- Susan died on October 26, 2026, at the age of 80.
- What happened to Susan Saint James?
- Nobody has proposed a theory yet. Anyone who knows something can add one, anonymously.
- Who else died on October 26?
- Famous deaths on October 26, across the years, and everyone who died in October 2026.
- Who else died in 2026?
- See everyone on Ohbit who died in 2026. Susan was 80.
Add a theory
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