Jane Wyman

On September 10, 2007, Jane Wyman passed away at the age of 90. Her son Micheal Reagan stated: “I have lost a loving mother, my children Cameron and Ashley have lost a loving grandmother, my wife Colleen has lost a loving friend she called Mom and Hollywood has lost the classiest lady to ever grace the silver screen.”

Jane Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield on January 5, 1917 in St. Joseph, Missouri. Her parents divorced when she was very young and her mother moved in 1928 to California to try and start an acting career. Her mother could not find any work and neither could Jane so they moved back to St. Joseph where Jane attended high school and began singing on the radio. She listed her birthday as 1914 probably in order to appear older than her 15 years and work legally.

Jane returned to Hollywood in 1932 and was given small parts in various movies. She legally changed her last name to Wyman and became a Warner Bros. contract actress in 1936. In 1946 she was nominated for for Best Actress in The Yearling, but didn’t win. Two years later she won the Academy Award for her role in Johnny Belinda where she played a deaf-mute rape victim. She was the first person to win an Oscar in a sound movie that didn’t speak a word. After the Oscar win, she starred in numerous other films.

She hosted a television series in the 1950s entitled Jane Wyman Theater but it only ran three seasons. She was involved in a few television pilots in the 60s and 70s that never materialized and she retired from show business for a short while.

Wyman was offered the role of Angela Channing in Falcon Crest, the night time soap opera, which was a hit from 1981 to 1990. After Falcon Crest, Wyman played only one more role, that of Jane Seymour’s mother in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, for one episode. Wyman had starred in 83 movies, two television series and was nominated for an Oscar four times.

Wyman had already been married and divorced twice when she starred in two movies with Ronald Reagan. The two married in 1940 and were divorced eight years later. They had three children, Maureen, Michael and Christine (who died at one day old).

Wyman lived in seclusion for the last years of her life. She attended her daughter Maureen funeral and that of President Reagan. In 2003, she moved to a retirement home in Palm Springs, California.