Biography
This page uses content from the Jane Wyatt biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.
Jane Waddington Wyatt (August 12 1910 – October 20 2006) was an American actress in films and television.
Her most famous role was as Ronald Colman's love interest in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). Other film appearances included 1947's Gentleman's Agreement (with Gregory Peck), None but the Lonely Heart (with Cary Grant), and Boomerang (with Dana Andrews).
For many people, she is best remembered for her television roles, as Margaret Anderson, the mother in the 1950s television comedy Father Knows Best; and as Amanda Grayson, Mr. Spock's mother, in the 1967 episode Journey To Babel of the original Star Trek series and the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Late in her career, she played Katherine Auschlander, the wife of hospital administrator Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd), on the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere. Wyatt was once quoted as saying her fan mail for the first two roles exceeded that for her appearance in Lost Horizon.
One of four siblings, Wyatt was born in Campgaw (now part of Mahwah), Bergen County, New Jersey, but raised in New York City. Her father, Christopher Billop Wyatt, Jr., was a Wall Street investment banker, and her mother, the former Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington, was a drama critic for the Catholic World.
One of her ancestors, Rufus King, was a signer of the U.S. Constitution, a U.S. Senator and ambassador, and the Federalist candidate in the 1816 presidential election.
She had three siblings: Christopher III, Elizabeth, and Monica. She was also a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt and the poet Harry Crosby, through their shared descent from Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Her mother was a Catholic convert, and her father and husband ultimately converted as well, although Jane did not attend Catholic schools.
Wyatt was raised from the age of three months in New York City, attended the fashionable Chapin School and later Barnard College. After two years of college, she left to join the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where for six months she played a varied assortment of roles.
One of her first jobs on Broadway was as understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of Trade Winds - a career move that cost her her listing in the New York Social Register (she later was relisted upon her marriage). Receiving favorable notices on Broadway and celebrated for her understated beauty, Wyatt made the transition from stage to screen and was placed under contract at Universal, where she co-starred in Frank Capra's Columbia film Lost Horizon. Of her experience in Lost Horizon, she noted in an article in the St. Anthony Messenger newsletter, "During the war, they cut out all the pacifist parts of the film—the High Lama talking about peace in the world. All that was cut because they were trying to inspire those G.I.'s to get out there and go 'bang! bang! bang!' which sort of ruined the film."
Though one of her early suitors was John D. Rockefeller III, on November 9 1935, Wyatt married investment broker Edgar Bethune Ward. He died on November 8 2000, the day before what would have been their 65th wedding anniversary. The couple met in the late 1920s, when both were weekend houseguests of Franklin D. Roosevelt at Hyde Park. The Wards had two surviving sons. According to Wyatt's obituary in The Washington Post, a third son died in infancy in the early 1940s.
From 1954 to 1960, she co-starred with Robert Young in Father Knows Best, the classic TV show chronicling the life and times of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield. She won the Emmy for best actress in a comedy for three years in a row for her role as Margaret Anderson.
Her film career suffered because of her outspoken opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the chief figure in the anti-Communist investigations of that era. Her career was temporarily damaged for having assisted in hosting a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet during the Second World War, even though it was at President Roosevelt's request ([1]). As a result, she returned to her roots on the New York stage for a time and appeared in such plays as Lillian Hellman's The Autumn Garden opposite Fredric March.
Wyatt died on October 20 2006 of natural causes at her home in Bel-Air, California, at the age of 96. Her funeral mass was held on Friday, October 27, at the Church of St. Martin of Tours in Brentwood, California.
She is survived by sons Christopher Ward of Piedmont, California and Michael Ward of Los Angeles; three grandchildren, Nicholas, Andrew and Laura; and five great-grandchildren.
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