Jane Wyatt; Independent obit (and it's lovely)
Hyfler/Rosner
Star of 'Lost Horizon' and 'Pitfall' who gained TV fame in
'Father Knows Best' and 'Star Trek'
The Independent
Tom Vallance
24 October 2006
Jane Wyatt had an exceptionally long acting career in film,
television and on stage. Petite and pretty, she had an
innate warmth that permeated her performances in such films
as Lost Horizon and Pitfall, and brought her many roles as
congenial, understanding wives - an image she had great
success with on television in the series Father Knows Best,
for which she won three Emmy Awards. Later a new generation
discovered her as Spock's mother in Star Trek.
She was also a leading figure in Hollywood society, as
befitting a descendant of early Dutch settlers - a paternal
ancestor, Philip Livingston, was a signatory of the
Declaration of Independence.
Wyatt's mother was a Colonial Dame of America, her father of
English and Irish stock. When Jane Waddington Wyatt was born
in Campgaw, New Jersey, in 1910, they were part of New
York's famed "Four Hundred" but, contrary to some reports,
they did not threaten to disown their daughter when she
declared her ambition go on the stage. "I can't remember a
time when I didn't want to be an actress," she recalled:
I've read reports that my family didn't want me to act and
disowned me. Not a bit of it. My mother was a dramatic
critic for 35 years. I was surrounded by drama. All my
father's side of the family were Episcopalian ministers, and
he said, "What's the difference between the pulpit and the
stage?"
Attending Barnard College, part of Columbia University,
Wyatt performed in school plays and during the summer acted
with the Berkshire Playhouse:
They asked me to come back the next summer, so I thought,
"I'm not going back to college. I'm going to get a job and
learn how to act." So I walked up and down Broadway trying
to get a job. It was fun, but I don't know if you can do
that today.
She made her Broadway début as the ingénue in Give Me
Yesterday (1931) by A.A. Milne, playing the daughter of the
English prime minister (Louis Calhern). Other small roles
followed, while she studied with Miss Robinson Duff, whose
other pupils included Katharine Hepburn and Ina Claire.
Plays in which she appeared on Broadway included Fatal Alibi
(1932), starring Charles Laughton and based on Agatha
Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Somerset Maugham's
For Services Rendered (1933), and Evensong (1933), in which
she played the niece of a temperamental opera star (Edith
Evans):
Evans had had a big hit with the play in London, and I
remember the director telling us that this was one of the
greatest actresses in the world, but somehow on the opening
night she was awfully nervous and she did not get good
reviews. I got spectacular reviews.
Offered a Hollywood contract that allowed her to take stage
work in New York, she made her screen début as the younger
sister of Diana Wynyard in James Whale's One More River
(1934 - "I adored Diana," she said), and then played Estella
in Great Expectations (1934), co-starring Phillips Holmes as
Pip. "He was beautiful-looking and just as nice as could
be," recalled Wyatt, "but he was on drugs. He was the first
person I had heard of being on drugs - it was to ruin his
career."
After roles in We're Only Human and The Luckiest Girl in the
World (both 1936), Wyatt was cast in her most memorable
role, in Frank Capra's enduring fantasy Lost Horizon (1937),
which put the word Shangri-La (the dream city in which
people hardly age) into the English language:
Frank said he needed an unknown, but somebody experienced in
movie-making, and since I'd only done flops I fit the bill .
. .
Lost Horizon was "a hit but not a smash". She attributed
much of the film's appeal to its cast:
Those great character actors are gone. In 1937 we'd see them
in every other picture so they seemed less special. Now we
can sit back and appreciate them because that kind of acting
will never be seen again.
Her next films were inconsequential, and in 1940 she
returned to Broadway to star alongside Elia Kazan and Morris
Carnovsky in Clifford Odets's Night Music, a Group Theatre
production that ran for only 20 performances, though the
three leading players received glowing reviews. She returned
to Hollywood to appear in wartime morale boosters such as
Army Surgeon and The Navy Comes Through (both 1942) and the
westerns Buckskin Frontier and The Kansan (both 1943):
They were fun because I loved to ride. My leading man in
both was Richard Dix from the silent days, and he was old
enough to be my father. By the time he'd put on his hat and
his dentures in and he had his corset on and high heels, he
was more romantic than anyone in the picture.
None but the Lonely Heart (1944), written by Odets, starred
Cary Grant in the offbeat role of a cockney down-and-out:
A lot of the Group Theatre were in that. Cary, who told me
this was as close as he ever got to revealing his true self
to audiences, should have won an Oscar, but people didn't
like him in that sort of role.
After a Broadway hit, Hope for the Best (1945), and a tour
as Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth (1946), Wyatt co-starred
with Adolph Menjou and Gail Russell in the amusing film
comedy The Bachelor's Daughters (1946), then played a small
role in the Oscar-winning film about anti-Semitism,
Gentleman's Agreement (1947), directed by her friend Elia
Kazan. She then appeared in another distinguished Kazan
film, Boomerang! (1947), as the wife of an an attorney (Dana
Andrews), and followed this with one of the finest of her
"wife" roles, that of the wife and mother whose husband
(Dick Powell) has an affair in André de Toth's highly
regarded film noir Pitfall (1948). The French critic
Philippe Garnier wrote of the moment when Wyatt discovers
the affair,
It is on Jane Wyatt's haggard face that one's attention
finally rests. This pretty little face, usually so strong
and witty, is suddenly broken by pain, humiliation and
incomprehension. And this is the same face found in the last
scene, eyes fixed on the car windscreen in order not to look
at her husband while, in a feeble voice, she announces the
sort of pardon which has nothing to do with a happy ending .
. . One of the most chilling endings in the history of
cinema. And also one of the most realistic.
Wyatt next played Gary Cooper's wife in the 1949 naval drama
Task Force ("Cooper, who had casting approval, jokingly told
me he asked for Jane Wyman and got me by mistake") and a
wife and mother distressed at her eldest daughter's reaction
upon discovering she was adopted in Our Very Own (1950),
then returned to film noir with Fritz Lang's The House by
the River (1950). She starred with Lee J. Cobb in The Man
Who Cheated Himself (1951), but too many of her roles were
inconsequential - such as Betty Grable's best friend in My
Blue Heaven (1951) - and movie offers became scarce after
she joined a group of stars who flew to Washington to
protest at the hearings of the Un-American Activities
Committee.
Film offers already made were rescinded, and further offers
were unforthcoming. "So I went to New York and did live
television, which I loved doing." Wyatt returned to
Hollywood when asked to appear in the television version of
a radio show, Father Knows Best:
I was asked time and again and said, "No." I didn't want to
be in a TV series. To me it seemed so way down below you and
so boring to be stuck in a part. My agent called and said it
was the last chance, and my husband said, "Look, you've been
in New York all this time and haven't had a decent play. Why
don't you read the script?" Well, I read it and it was
charming, so I agreed, returned to Hollywood, and did it for
six years [1958-63], and it was fun. It could have gone on
forever, but the children had grown up.
Each show started with the husband (Robert Young) arriving
home from work, taking off his sports jacket and putting on
a comfortable sweater before dealing with the everyday
problems of a growing family. He and his wife Margaret
(Wyatt) were portrayed as thoughtful, responsible adults (in
contrast to the majority of situation comedies of the time)
and when the series ended it was at the peak of its
popularity. Wyatt won Best Actress Emmy awards for her role
in 1958, 1959 and 1960.
A later television role was to bring Wyatt notoriety, that
of Spock's earth-born mother in the Star Trek episode
"Journey to Babel" (1967), a role she reprised in the film
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986):
I get fan mail from Father Knows Best and Lost Horizon, but
the Star Trek mail gets more and more. I'm a human who
married a Vulcan - someone has written a whole book about
the mother.
Wyatt once said, "My dream of being in a great Broadway play
never did come true." Asked by Michael Gartside in 1998 what
her philosophy was, she replied,
To have a happy marriage. I have been married for 63
wonderful years, and I adore my sons. But it is hard to act
and be a family person.
Her husband, Edgar Ward, died the day before their 65th
wedding anniversary. She said, "The acting was the icing on
the cake, really."
Jane Waddington Wyatt, actress: born Campgaw, New Jersey 12
August 1910; married 1935 Edgar Ward (died 2000; two sons,
and one son deceased); died Bel Air, California 20 October
2006.
Brad Ferguson
<rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
> I get fan mail from Father Knows Best and Lost Horizon, but
> the Star Trek mail gets more and more. I'm a human who
> married a Vulcan - someone has written a whole book about
> the mother.
Hell, they've written books and fanfic about the whole family, going
back generations. There was at least one that had Amanda, whose last
name was Grayson, as a descendant of Robin the Boy Wonder.
Jim Beaver
"Brad Ferguson" <thir...@frXOXed.net> wrote in message
news:251020062329175864%thir...@frXOXed.net...
Really? I didn't think Robin swung that way.
Brad Ferguson
<jumb...@prodigy.spam> wrote:
Gotham City okayed gay adoption years ago, after that whole Barbara
Gordon thing they don't like to talk about.
Louis Epstein
: Wyatt once said, "My dream of being in a great Broadway play
: her philosophy was, she replied,
:
: To have a happy marriage. I have been married for 63
: wonderful years, and I adore my sons. But it is hard to act
: and be a family person.
:
: Her husband, Edgar Ward, died the day before their 65th
: wedding anniversary. She said, "The acting was the icing on
: the cake, really."
How does that rank among movie-star marriages?
-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.
Jim Beaver
"Louis Epstein" <l...@main.put.com> wrote in message
news:LI6dnSsyDIaqahjY...@velocitywest.net...
> Hyfler/Rosner <rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
> : Wyatt once said, "My dream of being in a great Broadway play
> : never did come true." Asked by Michael Gartside in 1998 what
> : her philosophy was, she replied,
> :
> : To have a happy marriage. I have been married for 63
> : wonderful years, and I adore my sons. But it is hard to act
> : and be a family person.
> :
> : Her husband, Edgar Ward, died the day before their 65th
> : wedding anniversary. She said, "The acting was the icing on
> : the cake, really."
>
> How does that rank among movie-star marriages?
>
Somewhat behind Karl Malden's, whose 68th wedding anniversary it is today.
Jim Beaver