In Remembrance: Jane Wyatt

 

     Jane Wyatt, the screen actress who won three Emmy Awards for her portrayal as the loving and patient housewife on the 1950s comedy series Father Knows Best, has passed away on October 20, 2006 in Bel-Air, CA. She was 96.

 

     Born on August 12, 1910 in Campgaw, NJ, Wyatt majored in history at Bernard College for two years before leaving for an apprenticeship at the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, MA. She landed her first New York stage role shortly afterwards in a 1931 production of Give Me Yesterday and made her Broadway debut in 1933 replacing Margaret Sullivan in the ongoing production of Dinner At Eight.

 

     In 1934 Wyatt was signed to a short term contract with Universal Studios who debuted her in a supporting role in the drama One More River (1934). Impressed with her work, she was given the lead role of Estella in their adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations that same year. She would only make a small number of films at the studio over the remainder of her contract, the only notable one being her last film of her contract- director Frank Capra’s classic Lost Horizon (1937).

 

     Wyatt would spend the next two decades of her career splitting her time between Broadway and Hollywood. In the early 1940s she starred in several B-pictures for Republic and RKO Studios. However, by not remaining with one studio for any amount of time, she was able to land roles in A-list pictures such as Boomerang! and Gentleman’s Agreement (both 1947) for 20th Century Fox, Pitfall (1948) for United Artists and Task Force (1949) for Warner Brothers.

 

     Film roles dried up for Wyatt in the 1950s, following her 1947 appearance with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and other Hollywood notables in Washington, DC at a protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee. Wyatt was still able to get work in television, appearing in Your Show Of Shows, Ford Television Theatre and Philip Morris Playhouse before taking her starring role in Father Knows Best in 1955. The show ran for four years and Wyatt continued to work primarily in television for the remainder of her career.

 

     Wyatt’s last film role was in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as half-alien science officer Spock’s human mother, a part she originated on the original Star Trek television series in 1967.