[Deathwatch] Jane Wyman, actress, 93

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Jane Wyman, Oscar winner, dies at 93

The Associated Press
Monday, September 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES: Jane Wyman, an Academy Award winner and the first wife of
President Ronald Reagan, has died at her home in Palm Springs,
California. She was 93.

Wyman, who won an Oscar for her role as the deaf rape victim in "Johnny
Belinda," died Monday morning, said Richard Adney of Forest Lawn
Memorial Park and Mortuary in Cathedral City. No further details were
immediately available.

Wyman's film career began with "Gold Diggers of 1937" and ended in 1969
when she co-starred with Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason in "How to Commit
Marriage." From 1981 to 1990, she played Angela Channing, the ruthless
vineyard owner in the "Falcon Crest" television series.

Born in 1914 in St. Joseph, Missouri, she married Reagan, then a fellow
Warner Bros. contract player, in 1940. The marriage was celebrated in
the fan magazines as one of Hollywood's ideal unions. While he was in
uniform during World War II, her career ascended, signaled by her
Academy Award nomination for the 1946 film "The Yearling."

Their daughter, Maureen, was born in 1941. They later adopted a son,
Michael. They also had a daughter who was born several months
prematurely in June 1947 and died a day later.

The couple divorced in 1948, the year Wyman won the Oscar for "Johnny
Belinda." Reagan reportedly cracked to a friend: "Maybe I should name
Johnny Belinda as co-respondent."

After Reagan became governor of California and then president of the
United States, Wyman kept a decorous silence about her former husband,
who had married the actress Nancy Davis.

In a 1968 newspaper interview, Wyman explained the reason: "It's not
because I'm bitter or because I don't agree with him politically. I've
always been a registered Republican. But it's bad taste to talk about
ex-husbands and ex-wives, that's all. Also, I don't know a damn thing
about politics."

A few days after Reagan died on June 5, 2004, Wyman broke her silence,
saying: "America has lost a great president and a great, kind and
gentle man."

When "Falcon Crest" ended, she withdrew from public view. She saw a few
intimates and devoted much of her time to painting.

She summed up her long career in a 1981 newspaper interview: "I've been
through four different cycles in pictures: the brassy blonde, then came
the musicals, the high dramas, then the inauguration of television."

In Reagan's autobiography "An American Life," the index shows only one
mention of Wyman, and it runs for only two sentences. "That same year I
made the Knute Rockne movie, I married Jane Wyman, another contract
player at Warners," Reagan wrote. "Our marriage produced two wonderful
children, Maureen and Michael, but it didn't work out, and in 1948 we
were divorced."


Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary