Academy Award winner. Acclaimed actress. Artist. Mother. Jane Wyman has done it all. She has amassed a superb body of work, from her Academy Award winning performance in Johnny Belinda as a tragic victim, to her triumphant swansong as powerful and successful Angela Channing on Falcon Crest, but most notably, she has become a legend, all the while maintaining an intriguing silence.

On January 4, 1914, in Saint Joseph, Missouri, Sarah Jane Fulks, as Wyman was christened, was born. The daughter of Richard D. Fulks and Emma Reise, Wyman grew up with an older brother and sister. Her parents were well into their middle years and her brother and sister were significantly older than her, circumstances that have been suggested as explaining Wyman's isolation from the outside world. By all accounts, Wyman grew up in an unhappy and humourless household, and later told Guidepost Magazine in 1964, that "shyness is not a small problem; it can cripple the whole personality. It crippled mine for many years. As a child, my only solution to the problem of shyness was to hide, to make myself as small and insignificant as possible. All through grade school I was a well-mannered little shadow who never spoke above a whisper."

Wyman found interest in dancing when she was still a child, and despite her family's dislike of the idea, she relished the interest and understanding of her instructor and found happiness and laughter amongst her friends. When her parents discovered her talent, they encouraged her to take up singing and dancing and by 1922, at the age of eight, Wyman's mother had taken her to Hollywood to audition. After little success, Wyman and her mother returned to Saint Joseph. In 1929, Wyman's father passed on, and with little else keeping them in Missouri, Jane and her mother returned to Hollywood.

In a little known moment, Wyman fell in love with and married Eugene Wyman while still in her late teens. Wyman has never talked about this event but it's understood it was dissolved in less than a month when it ended in heartbreak. The exact circumstances surrounding the relationship are shrouded in mystery, confidants of Wyman who are willing to talk freely about her reportedly clam up upon mention of Eugene Wyman. Whatever the circumstances, Sarah Jane Fulks adapted the stage name 'Jane Wyman' and in 1932 Wyman landed her first role in the chorus of The Kid From Spain. Bits and chorus-girl stints in several movies followed, including Rumba, All the King's Horses, and Stolen Harmony.

In 1936 Wyman scored a bit part in the William Powell-Carole Lombard screwball classic, My Man Godfrey. "I was twenty two; that was damned late to be starting at the bottom in youth-crazy Hollywood; other girls had made it at seventeen; the camera loved fresh faces - but that bit in Godfrey raised my spirits none the less." Wyman's spirits plummeted when the picture came out and her part was left on the cutting room floor, but the bit part got her a stock contract at Warner Bros in May of 1936. Small parts followed (including The King and the Chorus Girl where she was billed fifth).

After another small part in The Singing Marine, Wyman got her first leading role opposite Kenny Baker in Mr. Dodd Takes the Air in 1937. Public Wedding, with William Hopper came next. Wyman completed several other movies in leading roles while on loan to Universal and Columbia, before Wyman met a young actor named Ronald Reagan, a Warner Bros. hopeful at the time. Wyman was awe-struck by Reagan, but something stood in her way. She was a married woman. She had met Myron Futterman, a wealthy, middle-aged clothing manufacturer from New Orleans, in 1936, when, rumour had it, she party-girled at the studio's behest to entertain visiting entrepreneurs from the hinterlands. Futterman shortly proved himself to be the wrong man for her. Their interests diverged crucially. A little over a year after their elopement, they separated - later to divorce.

Brother Rat, Wyman's sixth and last film of 1938, a year in which she was handed pedestrian and thankless parts but proved, nonetheless, a vital presence, is the film in which she got to know - and fell in love with - Ronald Reagan. On January 27, 1940, Wyman and Reagan were wed. Social-writer Louella Parsons gave the reception and often chatted about her "favourite love-birds". In 1941, the couple welcomed their daughter, Maureen, into the world. In her autobiography, June Allyson reflected on the opposites-attract dynamic that most saw as the key to the Wyman-Reagan marriage: "when Ronnie got through explaining something to me, Jane Wyman leaned over and said, 'Don't ask Ronnie what time it is because he will tell you how a watch is made.'" The differing values, however, did not sustain the marriage, they added to the factors that lead to its collapse. Wyman prophetically told friend Joy Hodges shortly before the break up, "Well, if he is going to be President, he is going to get there without me."

By the early 1940s, Warner Brothers were not recognizing Wyman's talent and she was handed roles in forgettable movies. Her small part in Hollywood Canteen in 1944 saw her only scene ever with Bette Davis. After unfulfilling roles at Warners, Wyman had the opportunity to make movie-goers take note while on loan to Paramount. The Lost Weekend was surrounded with controversy along with social relevance, it's central theme of an alcoholic in a shocking downward spiral simply was not done in Hollywood at the time. Ray Milland broke his own stereotype to play serious drama, and likewise, Jane Wyman was freed from her title as 'perky entertainer'. "It changed my whole life," Wyman later said of the movie. The movie was a critical success, with Milland winning an Academy Award, and Wyman gaining much notice for her dramatic role in the movie. The following year Wyman and Reagan adopted a son, Michael.

The Lost Weekend was to prove a watershed film for Wyman in that her acting was taken far more seriously by producers and directors. It was to lead to the film that would bring her to a new height of critical and popular esteem, The Yearling. On loan once more, this time to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wyman had to wait out protracted delays in production before The Yearling was released in 1946. Of her triumphant role, Wyman said "It was my biggest chance yet, and I was determined to make the most of it. I was determined to act from the inside out, to disregard all surface effects, and delve into the character of a sturdy woman who endured hardship stoically and who concealed a deeply emotional nature under a frosty, pragmatic exterior. I meditated on the role at great length; I wanted to get to the bottom of this woman's psyche. And in doing so I dredged up all the early hardships and disappointments in my own life, looking constantly for some points of reference that would link our respective inner schemes."

Wyman was lauded for her role, with Dorothy Kilgallen, the noted New York columnist, writing: "Jane Wyman, demonstrating an amazing versatility, is the surprise of the picture. She plays the drab, nagging, miserable farm wife with such authority and defininition as to make it almost impossibe to believe that this weary creature and the glamourous cookie of Night and Day came from the repertoire of the same actress." The Yearling brought Wyman a nomination for the 1946 Academy Award, which she later lost to Olivia De Havilland for To Each His Own.

Success in The Yearling did not translate to any great opportunities for Wyman immediately thereafter. Her roles in Magic Town with Jimmy Stewart and Cheyenne with Dennis Morgan were limited by the material. But all was not lost, around the corner was a role that offered her unparalleled creative dynamism. The role of a deaf mute in Johnny Belinda certainly cememted Wyman's status as a top Hollywood star and actress.

Johnny Belinda is the story of a deaf mute in Nova Scotia who is taught to speak by a kind doctor. She is scorned and regarded as mentally deficient by the townspeople and even by her own family. Only the doctor offers her genuine friendship. Later she is raped by a townsman an dbecomes pregnant. When the baby is born, and the real father, whose name she has kept secret, sees that the baby is normal physically, he tries to take it away from her. She kills him, but is later exonerated, and achieves a new understanding with her family and the town, and fortifies her friendship with the doctor.

Co-starring with Lew Ayres and Agnes Moorehead, Wyman worked hard on her performance. She spent months studying the deaf, scrutinizing their mannerisms, their expressions, especially the look in their eyes, which she described as "searching, wandering, vacant in a way but lit up, somehow." Jack Warner held up release of the picture convinced it was too morbid. When it was finally released, months after production finished, and turned out to be a smash hit, critically and commercially, Wyman made Warner take out a trade ad, in which he profusely congratulated the cast, crew, and all connected with Johnny Belinda.

The sweetest reward came later that year when Wyman was nominated for the Academy Award alongside Irene Dunne, Olivia De Haviland, Barbara Stanwyck and Ingrid Bergman. She won. Standing on the stage before her peers, Wyman was given the Oscar, and said, "I accept this award very gratefully - for keeping my mouth shut once. I think I'll do it again." It was one of the briefest acceptance speeches on record. Jack Warner immediately signed Wyman to a new ten year contract.

It was a period of great professional success, but was to be the end of her marriage to Reagan. Two years earlier, Wyman and Reagan were devastated when Wyman gave birth prematurely to a baby girl, who died within hours, while Reagan was in hospital after contracting neumonia. It was the beginning of the end. Wyman had become inconsolable and reclusive. She threw herself into her work and during the filming of Johnny Belinda, Wyman and Lew Ayres, despite not liking each other initially, became very close, while Reagan was embroiled in the Screen Actors Guild. Wyman announced it was over, letting it be known that Reagan was patronizing and indifferent to her career efforts. The divorce was finalised in 1949 and soon Wyman began seeing Lew Ayres again.

In 1949, Wyman went to England to star in Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright. It was a challenging affair, but mostly because of off-screen tensions. Wyman and Alfred Hitchcock seem to have gotten on with a "pleasant uneasiness." Associates of both felt that their chemistries were not really suited. Then there was Marlene Dietrich, Wyman's co-star, who reportedly resented Wyman's being billed over her. When asked later if she enjoyed working with Wyman, Dietrich must have remembered the billing, because her answer was an indifferent shrug.

Within a week of her return from England, Wyman went to work on The Glass Menagerie, playing the fragile cripple, Laura, who lives in an imaginary world of small glass animals and who must cope with the overly anxious and aggressive efforts of her mother, Gertrude Lawrence, to make of her what she herself once was, a "belle of the ball" in Mississipi. A role opposite Bing Crosby in Here Comes the Groom followed. Wyman then accepted a lead role in the dramatic The Blue Veil, a 1951 hit that saw Wyman's character age from twenty to seventy, and which also awarded her another Oscar nomination.

When Wyman was contracted out to Columbia to work on Let's Do It Again, she met Freddie Karger, a Columbia pianist and composer, and the couple wed in Santa Barbara in 1952. Trouble began shortly after with Wyman's salary and social status being above Karger's, which made him feel inferior. Separations and reconciliatons followed all through 1953 and 1954 in bewildering tandem, and finally Wyman threw in the towel with a divorce in 1954, where Wyman said in the suit that Karger had a fierce temper and threatened her by throwing furniture around. Devastated and embarassed at her fourth marital failure, Wyman began taking instruction in the Roman Catholic faith after being influenced by close friend Loretta Young. Seven years after Wyman's divorce to Karger, she remarried him in 1961, buoyed by his conversion to Catholicism. The marriage lasted four years but again broke up due to career incompatibilities.

Wyman was never to remarry. "I guess I just don't have a talent for it," she told friends after the second Karger divorce. "Some women just aren't the marrying kind - or anyway, not the permanently marrying kind, and I'm one of them." Karger and Wyman remained friends.

Meanwhile, Wyman's career had continued to grow. In 1954, on loan to Universal, Wyman hit box office gold with Magnificent Obsession, in which Wyman co-starred with Rock Hudson. Wyman was nominated for an Oscar for her role, her fourth and final nomination. Lucy Gallant, with Charlton Heston followed in 1955, upon which Heston commented about Wyman: "she gives not one hundred percent but one hundred and twenty percent to whatever she is doing. She is a conscientious artist, determined to do her best at all times...and also a lot of fun, very down-to-earth and unaffected."

Capitalizing on the success of Magnificent Obsession, Universal again cast Wyman and Hudson in the critically acclaimed All That Heaven Allows. In the film, Wyman plays a widow who is lonely and disoriented in her inner life. Middle-aged, with children in college, she falls in love with her gardener, Hudson, despite their class and age differences. Hudson said of the experience, "working with Jane was always an inspiration. Just playing to her brought out more of my capacities than I suspected were there. The picture was handsomely put together, with a host of fine actors in support, and it is one of my favourite films."

In 1955 Wyman turned to television when she took over as president of the company that produced TV's Fireside Theatre, an anthology series that had already been a going concern for seven years. As chief policy implementer, she announced that that series would offer a variety of comedy and drama, and shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre. "I'm having the time of my life, even while working harder than ever before," she said. The show continued until 1959 when it was cancelled, and she invested further in friendships with Loretta Young and Barbara Stanwyck. Wyman continued with movies, including Holiday for Lovers and her acclaimed role in Pollyanna, alongside Hayley Mills.

Television guest stints followed, interspersed with more movie roles. Good friend and long-time co-star Agnes Moorehead said of the Wyman of the mid-sixties, "In some ways I think it was the most contented period of her life. The intense careerism had mellowed and lessened; she had her good friendships, her rewarding sessions with paintbrush and canvas, her pleasure in her developing teenage children. I think she had given up her illusions about men, and the kind of life she hoped to live with one. She had come to realise, in a sense, that she was her own best company - and understood herself better than any other human being ever would." Her last movie role was in the poorly received How To Commit Marriage in 1969, alongside Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, Tim Matheson and Tina Louise.

Guest roles on TV continued throughout the seventies, on My Three Sons, The Love Boat, The Jim Nabors Hour, The Bold Ones and The Mike Douglas Show. In 1971 Wyman starred alongside Dean Stockwell in a movie of the week, The Failing of Raymond. Wyman then co-starred with Lindsay Wagner in The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel. In what looked to be her last days of acting, Wyman made a guest appearance in Charlie's Angels. Of her appearance in the series, a reviewer noted: "That a first-class actress such as this should have to bother not only with ludicrous plot situations but with ludicrously untalented, however pretty, people around her seems a desecration in artistic terms. It is time that this fine veteran with proven abilities of purest gold were given the material eminently due her."

That material came in the form of a script that was to bring Wyman renewed fame. The television series that was to bring Jane Wyman a career renaissance that was as unexpected as it was welcome debuted on CBS on December 4, 1981. It was originally titled The Vintage Years in the beginning of production, but was overhauled before being renamed Falcon Crest, with an updated cast. Samantha Eggar, one of the originals on the pilot, was let go because her English accent sounded ridiculous in the California wine country setting where the show was set. Clu Gulagager was let go because his accent sounded too southern. Wyman appeared in a gray wig that preview audiences laughed at. For the reshoot of the pilot, the wig was put away, and Wyman went back to her own dyed brown hair.

Wyman then fretted about her character, Angela Channing. "After I told them I was plenty old enough and had enough gray hair without putting on that dreadful wig," she told an interviewer, "I decided to do something about Angela. Not only was she too mean and vicious, but she was just plain boring. I wanted Angie to be an interesting character. She's a tough as nails businesswoman in every sense of the word - but the trouble with the pilot was that she was just too nasty. And the name of the show was so awful that we were desperate for ideas."

Wyman and writer Earl Hamner, who had done the successful TV series The Waltons, kept the midnight oil burning thinking up new lines, situations, and general ideas. "Jane was tough - but she was also creative, and vastly experienced," Hamner said later. "We didn't always agree on everything, but I respected her intelligent insights, and I understood where she was coming from." Wyman had no intention of letting Angela Channing become a sort of J.R. Ewing of the wine business: "I feel I'm representing all women in business. I may come off as a hard, tough character at first, but I want Angie to show she's also capable of love."

In his original review of December 4, 1981, John O'Connor in The New York Times wrote: "and so it goes, the standard stuff of soaps, with a crisis bubble bursting at least three times between commmercial breaks . . . and at fadeout [Wyman] is meaningfully stroking a live falcon on the grounds of her estate. The stage is set for anything. Miss Wyman seems to be in remarkable control."

And that is how Wyman, and Angela Channing, remained throughout Falcon Crest's nine-year run. Today Jane Wyman is enjoying her isolation, appearing in arthritis benefits occasionally, but not interested in acting again, after her final role guest-starring on Jane Seymour's Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Wyman is content to keep looking to the future, an autobiography the last thing on her mind. "I'm a today lady," she has said. She's also a legend.

For more information on Jane Wyman, try one of the features below:
• Jane Wyman Photo Gallery
  
• Jane Wyman Cast Page
• Jane Wyman Where Are They Now? feature

This feature based in part on Lawrence J. Quirk's Jane Wyman, The Actress and the Woman, published by Dembner Books, New York, USA, 1986.

This site designed and maintained by Adrian McConchie. © 1998 Adrian McConchie. All rights reserved. Original images and materials © 1981-98 Warner Bros. Television. No material, designs, artwork, original images, titles or scripts may be reproduced without the consent of the respective author. 'Falcon Crest: A Tribute' is an independent site that shares no affiliation with Warner Bros.