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1 article from 2007

10 September 2007 | From IMDb News

Actress <N N="0943837">Jane Wyman</N>, who won an Oscar for her performance in <T T="0040495">Johnny Belinda</T> and who was known offscreen as the first wife of <N N="0001654">Ronald Reagan</N>, died Monday morning at her home in Palm Springs; she was 93. An actress who started out as a contract player at Warner Bros., Wyman worked in a number of B movies (with most of her early parts uncredited) and was rarely cast in a lead role. In fact, her most notable part during the early '40s was as the wife of fellow contract player Ronald Reagan, whom she married in 1940 and with whom she had two children, Maureen and Michael. Reagan and Wyman would divorce in 1948, as her career was taking off. In 1945, Wyman was able to persuade Jack Warner to loan her out for the Paramount film <T T="0037884">The Lost Weekend</T> opposite <N N="0001537">Ray Milland</N>. The film was a box office hit and a critical smash, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The role finally put her on the Hollywood map, and the following year she starred in the adaptation of <T T="0039111">The Yearling</T>, for which she received her first Oscar nomination. In 1948, she starred in the melodrama <T T="0040495">Johnny Belinda</T>, playing a deaf-mute woman living in the backwoods of Canada who falls in love with a kindly doctor (<N N="0000817">Lew Ayers</N>). The film, in which the deglamorized Wyman was a victim of rape, a single mother, town outcast and put on trial for murder -- all during which she never spoke a line of dialogue -- earned her a Best Actress Oscar and the freedom to choose roles she wished to play. <br><br> Wyman also starred in <T T="0042509">The Glass Menagerie</T>, <T T="0043350">The Blue Veil</T> (her third Academy Award nomination), <T T="0046333">So Big</T>, and two <N N="0802862">Douglas Sirk</N> dramas, <T T="0047203">Magnificent Obsession</T> and <T T="0047811">All That Heaven Allows</T>, both of which paired her with an up-and-coming actor by the name of <N N="0001369">Rock Hudson</N>; she received her fourth and final Oscar nomination for <i>Obsession</i>. In the late '50s she moved to television with her own show, <T T="0047745">Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theater</T>, and worked steadily in the medium throughout the '60s and '70s, occasionally appearing in feature films. In the early '80s Wyman enjoyed a career renaissance of sorts with the primetime soap opera <T T="0081858">Falcon Crest</T>, in which she played the wealthy and ruthless matriarch of a Napa Valley wine family. During the show's run, her former husband became president of the United States and despite her high profile, Wyman remained quiet and respectful about their marriage, never giving interviews about him. <T T="0081858">Falcon Crest</T>, which ran from 1981-1990, was essentially Wyman's last role; she made one last television appearance in 1993 in <T T="0103405">Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman</T>. Wyman was married five times, twice to her last husband, studio music director <N N="0439219">Fred Karger</N>, whom she divorced in 1965. She is survived by her son Michael; her daughter, <N N="0713975">Maureen Reagan</N>, died of cancer in 2001. <i>--Mark Englehart, IMDb staff</i> <br><br>

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1 article from 2007