In Remembrance: Jane Wyman

     Jane Wyman, the actress who won an Academy Award for her turn as a deaf/mute rape victim in 1948’s Johnny Belinda, has passed away on September 10, 2007 in Rancho Mirage, CA. She was 90.

     Although for years it was thought that Wyman was born on January 4, 1914, biographers have traced her birth date to January 5, 1917. The fudging of her birth date was thought to be so she could begin working, even though she was a minor. Much of the other details of her early life in Saint Joseph, Missouri are equally obscured. It is known that her parents divorced when she was four years old. At age 11, her mother Gladdys took her to Los Angeles where she tried to start an acting career. Two years later, mother and daughter relocated back to Missouri where young Jane began a singing career on radio, changing her birth date so she could work legally.

     Dropping out of high school in 1932 at age 15, Wyman headed back to Hollywood, doing odd jobs before landing chorus girl spots in such early talkies such as The Kid From Spain (1932), College Rhythm (1934) and George White’s 1935 Scandals (1935). These spots gave way to small, one or two-line bit parts. Slowly these parts increased in size over the next several years, until by the end of the 1930s she was appearing in supporting roles in such films as the comedy Brother Rat (1938) – where she met her first husband Ronald Reagan – and even took the lead in one installment of the Torchy Blaine comedy-mystery series Torchy Blane… Playing With Dynamite (1939).

     Wyman continued working steadily, finally garnering some significant critical notices for her work opposite Ray Milland in the 1946 alcoholism drama The Lost Weekend. The following year she was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in The Yearling. It would be her second Academy Award nomination, for Johnny Belinda, that would earn her an Oscar statue. In addition to her Oscar win for Johnny Belinda, Wyman would also receive further Academy Award nominations for her work in The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). She also appeared in such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950), The Glass Menagerie (1950), Frank Capra’s Here Comes The Groom (1951), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Pollyanna (1960) and Bon Voyage! (1962).

     After her final film, 1969’s How To Commit Marriage, she worked exclusively in television, most notably heading the cast of the prime-time soaper Dynasty for nine years.