Actors - Jane Wyman

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	Actors - 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 Oscar-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.

Early life and career

Born Sarah Jane Mayfield in Saint Joseph, Missouri to the town's mayor and a struggling actress, and she later took the name Sarah Jane Fulks in honor of the neighbor family who "unofficially adopted" her after her father disappeared, leaving Sarah Jane and her birth mother in desperate straits.

In 1928, she 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 young Sarah Jane attended college, but 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, although she would have been underaged.

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 second or third marriage, and his first) on January 26, 1940, but 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 (born and died 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 due to 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 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 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 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), 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).

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Actors - Jane Wyman

Early life and career

Marriage to Ronald Reagan

Acclaim in Hollywood

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