Pamela Mason; Actress and Ex-Talk Show Host

Actress and Hollywood chronicler Pamela Mason, the former wife of the late British actor James Mason, died Saturday of heart failure. She was 80.

A frequent presence on her husband’s 1950s television program, “The James Mason Show,” she also appeared in the courtroom drama “Accused” and the 1985 television movie “My Wicked, Wicked Ways--The Legend of Errol Flynn.”

She wrote several books, including an advice book about men, and a movie industry column, and she was host of two syndicated talk shows. Her first talk show aired for one season in 1965, and she interviewed female guests on “The Weaker Sex,” a syndicated show that ran in 1968.

A Briton by birth, she became a U.S. citizen in 1959. In the glare of the Hollywood spotlight, she and her husband, a three-time Oscar nominee, divorced in 1964 after a 16-year marriage that produced two children. He died in 1984.