Jane Wyman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jane Wyman (born on January 4, 1914, though some sources claim she was born January 5, 1917) is an Oscar-winning American actress best known for playing disabled characters such as Belinda MacDonald in Johnny Belinda and Helen Phillips in Magnificent Obsession. She was also well known as the evil matriarch Angela Channing on the 1980s prime-time soap opera, Falcon Crest.
Early life
Born Sarah Jane Mayfield in Saint Joseph, Missouri to the town's mayor and a struggling actress, she later took the name Sarah Jane Fulks in honor of the neighbor family who "unofficially adopted" her after her parents divorced. In 1928, she and her mother moved to Southern California, where her mother, Le Jerne Pichelle, tried to start her own acting career. When that was unsuccessful, she turned to her daughter as an alternative, but neither was able to move Hollywood. The two moved back to Missouri, where Sarah Jane attended college, but in 1930 she began a radio singing career, calling herself Jane Durrell.
Early Hollywood career
By 1932, she was in Hollywood, obtaining bit parts in The Kid from Spain (as a 'Goldwyn Girl') (1932), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Cain and Mabel (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.
Marriage to Ronald Reagan
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 third marriage, and his first) on January 26, 1940, but divorced on June 28, 1948. They had three children; Maureen Reagan (1941-2001), Michael Reagan (born March 18, 1945), who was adopted, and Christine Reagan (born and died June 26, 1947).
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 finally won the Oscar 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 one line of dialogue. 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 meatier 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), 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 Gene Tierney in Holiday for Lovers (1959), Pollyanna (1960), Bon Voyage (1962), and her final big screen movie How to Commit Marriage (1969). Also, she starred in two unsold pilots of the 1960s and 1970s, and went into semi-retirement that same decade.
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
She gained a new generation of fans in the 1980s when she starred as the diabolical vintner Angela Channing in the night-time soap opera Falcon Crest, with the encouragement of her ex-husband and then US President Ronald Reagan. Also starring on that soap opera was Fernando Lamas's & Arlene Dahl's son, Lorenzo Lamas, who played Angela's irresponsible grandson, Lance Cumson, and the chemistry of both Wyman and Lamas were a hit. When Lamas came to the show, he not only not had to give her that Valentino look, but he was told to wear contact lenses as well, as they each shared their storylines and participated in different scenes. During the first season, Falcon Crest was a consistent ratings winner, although behind Dallas and Dynasty. In the second season of Falcon Crest in 1982, the writers were told to make the storylines a lot more dramatic and intriguing to improve ratings. For her role as Angela Channing, Jane 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). Jane Wyman feuded with actor Robert Foxworth (who played Chase Gioberti) right up until he left the show in 1987 to spend more time with his ailing girlfriend (Elizabeth Montgomery of Bewitched fame). 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 only one episode and was told by her doctor to end her acting career, but always wanted to keep working in order to remain popular. She completed almost all the episodes of the 1988-89 season, while her health was still deterioriating. In 1989, while Falcon Crest still had low ratings, she was hospitalized with diabetes and liver ailment, and the doctors told Wyman that she couldn't work any longer, and for most of the 9th and final season, her character Angela was to lay comatose in a hospital bed while her family was fighting over as to who got the Falcon Crest winery. The actor Lorenzo Lamas visited the ailing Wyman at the hospital. 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 on the series finale. She stayed on the show throughout its entire run, even when health problems plagued her, thus appearing in 208 of the 227 episodes of the series.
After Falcon Crest
Jane Wyman's last guest-starring role was that of Jane Seymour's mother on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. She retired after this role.
Private life
A devout Catholic convert, Jane Wyman has lived in reclusion for a number of years due to declining health (she suffers from arthritis and diabetes), and apparently tends to be seen in public only at funerals, such as for her late daughter, Maureen Reagan, and her late best friend Loretta Young.
During her retirement in 1997, she purchased a new house in Rancho Mirage, California, so that she could continue living a quiet life and attending honorable charity events. On April 16, 2003, she placed her 3200 square foot Rancho Mirage condominium on the market and moved to a house in Palm Springs, California. As of 2005, at age 91, she has starred in 83 movies, two successful TV series and was nominated for Oscars four times and won once.
Wyman has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for motion pictures at 6607 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 1620 Vine Street.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Wyman
