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Jane Wyman

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Jane Wyman
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Jane Wyman

Jane Wyman (born on January 4, 1914, though some sources once indicated she may have been born on January 5, 1917) is an Academy Award-winning American actress best known for playing disabled characters such as Belinda MacDonald in Johnny Belinda and Helen Phillips in Magnificent Obsession (opposite Rock Hudson). She was also well-known as the evil California matriarch, Angela Channing, on the 1980s prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest.

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Early life and career

Wyman was born as Sarah Jane Mayfield in Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Manning J. Mayfield, the town's mayor, and to Le Jerne Pichelle, a struggling actress. In 1921, one year after entering first grade at Noyes School, her parents divorced. Her father died unexpectedly the following year. She later took the name Sarah Jane Fulks in honor of the neighbor family who unofficially adopted her after her father died. In 1928, she moved to southern California, where her mother tried to start her own acting career. When that was unsuccessful, she turned to her daughter as an alternative but neither was able to find work. The two moved back to Missouri, where Sarah Jane attended school. In 1930, she began a radio singing career, calling herself Jane Durrell, and possibly (if the 1917 year of birth is accurate) adding years to her birthdate to work legally since she would have been underage.

By 1932, she was in Hollywood, obtaining small parts in The Kid from Spain (as a "Goldwyn Girl") (1932), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Cain and Mabel (1936). After legally changing her last name from Durrell to Wyman, she began her career as a contract player with Warner Brothers in 1936. Her big break came the following year, when she received her first big role in Public Wedding (1937), and her movie career took off.

In 1939, she received her first starring role, in Torchy Plays With Dynamite.

Marriages

In the previous year, she had co-starred with Ronald Reagan in Brother Rat (1938), and its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940). The two were married (her second or third marriage, and his first) on January 26, 1940, but they divorced on June 28, 1948.

She and Reagan had three children; Maureen Reagan (1941 - 2001), Michael Reagan (born March 18, 1945), who was adopted, and Christine Reagan, who and died the day she was born--June 26, 1947).

Previously she had married Myron Futterman on June 29, 1937, and they divorced on November 1, 1938. It was rumored but never confirmed that on April 8, 1933, she married Ernest Eugene Wyman (or Weymann). If this was true, then they divorced sometime before 1937. Again, if 1917 is the true year of birth she would have been 16 if she had married Eugene Wyman (or Weymann) in 1933, another reason, perhaps, for her making herself older, which is rare in the entertainment industry.

Following her divorce from Reagan, Wyman married bandleader Frederick Karger on November 1, 1952, and they divorced in December 1955. They later remarried on March 11, 1961, and divorced a second time in 1965. Wyman never remarried, and after her conversion to Roman Catholicism, both she and best friend Loretta Young required special indults from their bishop to receive communion because of their divorces.

Acclaim in Hollywood

Wyman finally gained critical notice in the film noir The Lost Weekend (1945). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 for The Yearling (1946), and won an Academy Award in 1948 for her role as the deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948). She was the first Oscar winner to earn the award without speaking a line of dialogue in the sound era.

In an amusing acceptance speech, perhaps poking fun at some of her long-winded counterparts, Wyman took her statue and said, "I won this by keeping my mouth shut, and that's what I'm going to do now."

The Oscar win gave her the ability to choose higher profile roles, although she still showed a liking for musical comedy. She worked with such directors as Alfred Hitchcock on Stage Fright (1950), with Frank Capra on Here Comes the Groom (1951) and with Michael Curtiz on The Story of Will Rogers (1952). She starred in The Glass Menagerie (1950), Just for You (1952), Let's Do It Again (1953), The Blue Veil (1951) (another Oscar nomination), the remake of Edna Ferber's So Big (1953), Magnificent Obsession (1954) (Oscar nomination), Lucy Gallant (1955), All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Miracle in the Rain (1956).

She came back to the big screen after her anthology series to replace the ailing Gene Tierney in Holiday for Lovers (1959), Pollyanna (1960), Bon Voyage (1962), and her final big screen movie How to Commit Marriage (1969). She also starred in two unsold pilots of the 1960s and 1970s, and went into semi-retirement that same decade. In 1960, Wyman's mother died in New York, and she was very devastated.

Television work

In the 1950s, she hosted a television anthology series, Jane Wyman Theater, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1957.

Falcon Crest

Main title caption from Falcon Crest.
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Main title caption from Falcon Crest.

Wyman gained a new generation of fans in the 1980s when she starred as the diabolical California vintner and matriarch, Angela Channing, in the night-time soap opera Falcon Crest. Co-starring on the soap was Fernando Lamas's and Arlene Dahl's son, Lorenzo Lamas, as Angela's irresponsible grandson and henchman, Lance Cumson, and the chemistry of both Wyman and Lamas made it a hit, both on the show and in real life. Wyman first met Lorenzo's late father Fernando Lamas on an episode of her own anthology show in the late 1950s (when Lamas was 3 months old), and more than 2 decades later, she suggested to Lorenzo that he should try out for the part in Falcon Crest. In its first season, Falcon Crest was a ratings winner, behind Dallas and Dynasty.

For her role as Angela Channing, Wyman was nominated for a Soap Opera Digest Award five times (for Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role and for Outstanding Villainess: Prime Time Serial), and was also nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1983 and 1984. That same year, she won the Golden Globe for "Best Performance By an Actress in a TV Series". In 1986, the actress had abdominal surgery which caused her to miss two episodes (her character, Angela, disappeared from the show after being arrested).

In 1988, Jane Wyman renegotiated her contract from the production company, and thus became the highest-paid actress on the show. That same year, she missed one episode and was told by her doctor to end her acting career. However, she wanted to keep working in order to remain popular. She completed almost all the episodes of the 1988-1989 season while her health was still deterioriating.

In 1989, while Falcon Crest had low ratings, she was hospitalized with diabetes and a liver ailment, and the doctors told Wyman that she could not work any longer, and for most of the 9th and final season, her character Angela lay comatose in a hospital bed while her family was fighting over who would control the winery.

Lorenzo Lamas visited her at the hospital that February where he gave her some words of wisdom. She soon recovered, and in 1990, against her doctor's advice, she returned to the show for the final three episodes and delivered a great soliloquy in the series finale.

She was on the show throughout its entire run, even when health problems plagued her, and she appeared in 208 of the 227 episodes of the series. Jane Wyman's last guest starring role was as Jane Seymour's mother on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. She retired afterwards.

Private Life

A devout Catholic convert, Jane Wyman has lived in seclusion for a number of years because of declining health (she suffers from arthritis and diabetes), and apparently tends to be seen in public only at funerals, such as for her daughter, Maureen Reagan, and her best friend, Loretta Young.

During her retirement in 1997, she purchased a house in Rancho Mirage, California, so that she could continue living a quiet life and attending honorable charity events.

On April 16, 2003, she moved to a retirement home in Palm Springs, California. As of 2006, she starred in 83 movies, two successful TV series, and was nominated for Oscars four times and won once.

Academy Awards and Nominations

Wyman has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for motion pictures at 6607 Hollywood Boulevard and one for television at 1620 Vine Street.

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Filmography

Television Work

External links

 

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