Oscar Profile #67: Jane Wyman

The only wife of a future president of the U.S. to win an Oscar, and the only Oscar winning actress to be buried in a nun’s habit, the facts of Jane Wyman’s life are somewhat obscured and confusing.

Born Sarah Jane Mayfield on January 5, 1917 in St. Joseph, Missouri, young Sarah Jane’s parents were divorced when she was very young, her father dying when she was either 5 or 8, depending on whether you believe she born in 1917 or 1914. Some records show the earlier date of birth which she later claimed she used to get jobs she wouldn’t have been able to get if she used her real age were known.

Later adopted by her neighbors, the Foulks or Fulks, she became Sarah Jane Fulks. After a succession of clerical and retail jobs, she became a radio singer in 1932 and married her first husband, whose last name was Wyman, a year later. Mainly in un-credited film roles from 1932 forward, she first became noticed under the name of Jane Wyman in 1938’s Brother Rat which also featured future husband Ronald Reagan. By this time she had divorced both Wyman and second husband, Myron Futterman.

Married to Reagan in 1940, the two had a daughter, Maureen (1941-1990) and an adopted son (Michael, born 1943). While Reagan’s career took off fairly quickly, Wyman’s did not. A supporting player in A pictures, with occasional leads in B films, it was as the second female lead in 1943’s Princess O’Rourke that she was discovered by Billy Wilder and cast opposite Ray Milland in 1945’s The Lost Weekend. Legend has it that Wilder had screened Princess O’Rourke to catch Olivia de Havilland’s performance as he was considering her for the lead in his film. This sounds a bit odd because Wilder certainly knew who de Havilland was, having written much of her dialogue for 1941’s Hold Back the Dawn.

Oscar nominated for her atypical portrayal of the harsh mother in 1946’s The Yearling, Wyman won the Oscar on her second nomination as the deaf mute rape victim in 1948’s Johnny Belinda opposite Lew Ayres. When she divorced Reagan shortly after winning the Oscar, she said it was because he talked too much, but it was later revealed that she was having an affair with Ayres who had previously been married to actresses Lola Lane and Ginger Rogers. The affair didn’t last and she later married and divorced music conductor Fred Karger, once in the 1950s and once again in the 1960s.

At this point in her career, Wyman had her pick of roles and successfully navigated musicals, comedies and dramatic works. In 1951 she received her third Oscar nomination for playing the World War I widow who becomes a nursemaid to other children after losing her own baby in The Blue Veil, her own favorite among her many films. That same year she and Bing Crosby introduced the Oscar winning “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” in Here Comes the Groom, a song she continued to sing at parties for the rest of her life.

She and Crosby reteamed for the equally successful Just for You in 1952, the same year she starred opposite Danny Kaye in the even better known musical, Hans Christian Andersen. Wyman then became queen of the 50s tearjerkers in such films as So Big; Magnificent Obsession for which she won her fourth and final Oscar nomination; All That Heaven Allows and Miracle in the Rain.

She followed good friend Loretta Young into television and was twice nominated for her an Emmy for her anthology series, Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre in which she starred in most of the show’s 49 episodes.

Back on the screen briefly in the 1960s, most notably in Disney’s 1960 classic, Pollyanna, her appearances form 1970 on were strictly for TV. She had one of her most memorable roles in the prime time soap opera, Falcon Crest, which lasted from 1981-1990, earning her a third Golden Globe along the way. She had previously won the award for Johnny Belinda and The Blue Veil.

A late life convert to Catholicism, Wyman joined good friend Loretta Young in administering to the sick and dying and was a lay member of the Dominican Order. As such she was allowed to be buried in a nun’s habit when she died in 1997 at the age of 90. She’s interred at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

JOHNNY BELINDA (1948), directed by Jean Negulesco

A huge hit in its day, Warner Bros. thought this seminal tearjerker about a deaf mute who is raped and becomes pregnant by her rapist, was a bomb and were quite shocked at the film’s huge box office and subsequent twelve Oscar nominations. Wyman’s win for Best Actress, though not unexpected, was not a slam dunk either. She faced tough competition from screen legends Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc; Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit; Irene Dunne in I Remember Mama and Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number, the latter two never having won despite multiple nominations.

THE BLUE VEIL (1951), directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Wyman’s personal favorite among her many films, and one which she had a print of which she would show to friends who had never seen it. Neither have most film buffs, as the film has been out of circulation for decades.

Wyman’s role is an actresses’ dream, as she goes from a heartbroken young widow who loses her baby within hours of his birth to caring for other people’s children all her life, only to be forgotten in old age until a chance meeting with one of her former charges brings renewed meaning to her life. She’s supported by a galaxy of fine character actors including Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell (in what was shockingly her only Oscar nominated role), Agnes Moorehead, Richard Carlson, Audrey Totter, Cyril Cusack, Everett Sloane and a young Natalie Wood.

JUST FOR YOU (1952), directed by Elliott Nugent

Wyman has never been lovelier, but all the performers shine in this delightful bon-bon, a coming-of-age tale disguised as a musical comedy with Robert Arthur and Natalie Wood as Bing Crosby’s kids. Wyman is the musical comedy star whom both the widowed Crosby and almost grown Arthur fall in love with. Ethel Barrymore is at her charming best as the wise head-mistress of Wood’s school. Crosby sings seven songs, Wyman three and the two join forces on the Oscar nominated “Zing a Little Zong”.

ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955), directed by Douglas Sirk

Generally regarded as Sirk’s masterpiece, this multi-dimensional love story is much more than the tearjerker it is disguised as. Wyman is the middle-aged widow who falls in love with her much younger gardener, Rock Hudson, who became an overnight star opposite Wyman in the 1954 remake of Magnificent Obsession much as the 1935 original had boosted Robert Taylor to stardom opposite Irene Dunne. Here their seemingly doomed romance is undermined by both fair weather friend Agnes Moorehead and her children (Gloria Talbot, William Reynolds) who give her a TV for Christmas, thinking that will curtail her sex drive.

POLLYANNA (1960), directed by David Swift

Wyman’s last box office success, the Disney film made a star of Hayley Mills who won the last honorary Oscar given a child performer in the title role. Wyman is her stern aunt who eventually melts when she falls in love with the local doctor played by Richard Egan. Mills steals the film, not only from Wyman, but from a whole host of fine character actors including Karl Malden, Adolphe Menjou, Donald Crisp and Agnes Moorehead.

It wouldn’t be for another twenty-one years until Wyman once again had a major success, this time as star of TV’s Falcon Crest, which ran for nine seasons, outlasting her former husband’s presidency.