Actress Jane Wyman dead

10/09/2007 22:06

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jane Wyman, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actress who was Ronald Reagan’s first wife and went on to star on the popular 1980s television drama "Falcon Crest," died on Monday at age 93.

Wyman, who married fellow actor and future U.S. President Reagan in 1940, but divorced him in 1948, died at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, said William Morton, a spokesman for Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary.

Beginning her career as a radio singer, the Missouri-born Wyman made her first film appearance as a chorus dancer in the 1935 musical "King of Burlesque" and signed with Warner Bros. studio the following year. 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. But 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 short-haired 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.

She won the Oscar as best actress for her 1948 role -- played at the age of 34 -- as a teenage .....continued below

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deaf-mute raped in "Johnny Belinda," a highly charged "woman’s" movie directed by Jean Negulesco.

Her two other Oscar nominations came for the 1951 drama "Blue Veil" with Charles Laughton and the 1954 Douglas Sirk-directed romance "Magnificent Obsession," opposite Rock Hudson. She later appeared in Sirk’s "All That Heaven Allows."

Wyman also began a television career in the 1950s, hosting the drama anthology series "The Jane Wyman Theatre." But she became best known to a later generation of viewers as the tough, empire-building 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.

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