Chinese Class - Actress Jane Wyman dead

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ENTERTAINMENT / Movies






Actress Jane Wyman dead


(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-11 09:58





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Actors Jane Wyman and husband Ronald Reagan are shown
in this undated photograph provided by the Screen Actors Guild.[Reuters]


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Jane Wyman, the Oscar-winning actress who was Ronald Reagan's first wife
and starred in the popular 1980s television drama "Falcon Crest," died on
Monday at age 90, her longtime manager said.

Wyman married fellow actor and future U.S. President Reagan in 1940 but
divorced him in 1948. She died at her home in Palm Springs, California,
having been in failing health for several years, business manager Michael
Mesnick said in a statement.

Known as "one-take Wyman" for her professional work ethic, Wyman appeared
in more than 80 films during a career spanning four decades. Her last
movie was the 1969 musical comedy "How to Commit Marriage" with Bob Hope
and Jackie Gleason.

Starting out as a radio singer, the Missouri-born Wyman broke into the
movies in the 1930s as a Goldwyn Girl and signed with Warner Bros. studio
in 1936. Her film acting debut came with a bit part in "Gold Diggers of
1937."

Initially typecast as a perky, sometimes flaky or tart-tongued blonde,
Wyman toiled for a decade in mostly B-movie fare and supporting roles in
bigger films. She gained notice in 1945 for her role as the girlfriend of
a chronic alcoholic in Billy Wilder's drama "The Lost Weekend."

Generally appearing as a brunette after that film, Wyman went on to give
a string of Oscar-nominated performances as a leading lady, beginning
with "The Yearling" opposite Gregory Peck in 1946.

OSCAR TIME AND DIVORCE

She won the Oscar as best actress for her 1948 role -- played when she
was 34 -- as a teenage deaf-mute raped in "Johnny Belinda." She and
Reagan, once hailed by the Hollywood publicity machine as the ideal
couple, saw their marriage collapse.

Wyman's two other Oscar nominations came for the 1951 drama "The Blue
Veil," in which she played a self-sacrificing nursemaid, and the 1954
Douglas Sirk-directed romance "Magnificent Obsession," opposite Rock
Hudson.

She sang in duet with Bing Crosby on the Oscar-winning song, "In the Cool
Cool Cool of the Evening," from Frank Capra's 1951 musical comedy "Here
Comes the Groom," and shared the screen with Marlene Dietrich in Alfred
Hitchcock's 1950 thriller "Stage Fright."

Wyman began a television career in the 1950s, hosting the drama anthology
series "The Jane Wyman Theater." She became best known to a later
generation of viewers as the ruthless family matriarch Angela Channing in
the CBS melodrama "Falcon Crest."

The show was a 1980s hit during the White House administration of her
former second husband, Reagan, with whom Wyman had a daughter, Maureen,
who died in 2001, and adopted a son, Michael, who became a conservative
radio host.

By then Reagan, whom Wyman had met and began dating during their work
together on the 1938 film "Brother Rat," had long been married to another
of his onetime co-stars, Nancy Davis.

Despite concerns in Reagan's camp during his first White House bid about
winning election as the first divorced president, Wyman remained
scrupulously silent about her ex-husband, as she had during his time as
California governor.

Michael Reagan wrote years later that his father "wouldn't have been
president being married to Jane Wyman. He needed a Nancy, who was willing
to give up her career to be there, by his side."

While her birthdate was widely cited as being in January 1914, her
manager Mesnick said Wyman was actually born three years later, a fact
she had long obscured for professional reasons because she had wanted to
be seen as older.

She was herself married a total of four times to three different men,
divorcing the last in 1965.

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