Barbara Anita Meek (February 26, 1934 – October 3, 2015) was an American actress best known to television viewers for playing the character of Ellen Canby for two seasons on Archie Bunker's Place.
[1] She was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Juanita (née Coleman) and Harold Talmadge Meek, and is the maternal granddaughter of the Reverend Horatius "H.H."
Highlights of Meek's stage career at Trinity included leading roles in the August Wilson plays Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, James Purdy's Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena, Peer Gynt, The Threepenny Opera, Tartuffe, The Visit, Fires in the Mirror, Adrian Hall and Robert Cumming's adaptation of A Christmas Carol (including the role of Ebenezer Scrooge), Terrence McNally's Master Class, Henry IV, Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and, more recently, Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
Meek's other television roles included Adrian Hall's adaptations of Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Life Among the Lowly, all broadcast on PBS; Melba, starring Melba Moore, on CBS; and Big Brother Jake, starring Jake Steinfeld, on The Family Channel.
Meek made guest appearances as Veronica Everestt on As the World Turns in both 1992 and 1997, Samantha Monroe on General Hospital in 1994 and 1999, and Verne Garrison on Guiding Light in both 1993 and 1999.