Post by jag11 on Sept 11, 2007 11:00:27 GMT -5
Remembering Jane Wyman
Academy Award winner Jane Wyman, who is fondly remembered as tough-as-nails matriarch Angela Channing on 1981-90 CBS drama Falcon Crest, passed away on Monday in her Palm Springs, California home. She was 93.
Born Sarah Jane Mayfield on Jan. 14, 1914 in St. Joseph, Missouri, her career in show business began as a radio singer named Jane Durrell in 1932. Four years later, and under contract to Warner Bros., Jane Durrell morphed into Jane Wyman, which led to a string of uneventful theatricals including Brother Rat (1938) and sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) opposite future husband Ronald Reagan. Greater success came calling for Wyman in the 1940s in The Lost Weekend and ultimately The Yearling, which netted the first of four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Wyman's one Oscar win came in Johnny Belinda in 1948, the same year her marriage to Reagan concluded.
After making a splash on the big screen, Wyman turned her focus to television and a guest starring stint on dramatic anthology Fireside Theatre led to the half-hour series being re-christened The Jane Wyman Show in 1955. Following a number of guest starring appearances on dramas like The Sixth Sense, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels, Wyman headed to Falcon Crest in 1981 and stayed with the serial as a regular until 1989. After Falcon Crest concluded in 1990, Wyman made one final guest starring appearance as the mother of Jane Seymour in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in 1993.
Wyman was married three times, and divorced for the second time from music director Fred Karger in 1965. Her daughter, political activist Maureen Reagan, died in 2001
Academy Award winner Jane Wyman, who is fondly remembered as tough-as-nails matriarch Angela Channing on 1981-90 CBS drama Falcon Crest, passed away on Monday in her Palm Springs, California home. She was 93.
Born Sarah Jane Mayfield on Jan. 14, 1914 in St. Joseph, Missouri, her career in show business began as a radio singer named Jane Durrell in 1932. Four years later, and under contract to Warner Bros., Jane Durrell morphed into Jane Wyman, which led to a string of uneventful theatricals including Brother Rat (1938) and sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) opposite future husband Ronald Reagan. Greater success came calling for Wyman in the 1940s in The Lost Weekend and ultimately The Yearling, which netted the first of four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Wyman's one Oscar win came in Johnny Belinda in 1948, the same year her marriage to Reagan concluded.
After making a splash on the big screen, Wyman turned her focus to television and a guest starring stint on dramatic anthology Fireside Theatre led to the half-hour series being re-christened The Jane Wyman Show in 1955. Following a number of guest starring appearances on dramas like The Sixth Sense, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels, Wyman headed to Falcon Crest in 1981 and stayed with the serial as a regular until 1989. After Falcon Crest concluded in 1990, Wyman made one final guest starring appearance as the mother of Jane Seymour in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in 1993.
Wyman was married three times, and divorced for the second time from music director Fred Karger in 1965. Her daughter, political activist Maureen Reagan, died in 2001