JANE WYMAN: DIGNITY IN DIVORCE

Jane Wyman could have had a bestseller.

But the Oscar-winning actress wouldn’t dish about her ex-husband. Not when Ronald Reagan was governor of California and not when he made history as the nation’s first divorced president.

Before Reagan, men with failed marriages were considered too tainted for the White House. Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce may have cost him the Republican primary nomination for president in 1964.

But by the time Reagan took the oath in 1981, with Nancy Reagan by his side in her royal blue suit and hat, the country was ready for the first lady to be a second wife.

And Wyman didn’t get in the way, though she surely knew plenty from her nine years of marriage to Reagan during Hollywood’s heyday.

Their time together — which included the birth of one child, the adoption of another and the death of a third — received little attention. Reagan never mentioned her in public. And Wyman got no more than a paragraph in his autobiography:

“The same year I made the Knute Rockne movie, I married Jane Wyman, another contract player at Warners. Our marriage produced two wonderful children, Maureen and Michael, but it didn’t work out, and in 1948, we divorced.”

That’s it.

And she honored him with similar silence.

Asked in 1968, right after Reagan became California’s 33rd governor, why she never spoke of her ex-husband’s political transformation and new starring role, Wyman was wry and succinct.

“It’s not because I’m bitter or because I don’t agree with him politically,” she said in 1968. “I’ve always been a registered Republican. But it’s bad taste to talk about ex-husbands and ex-wives, that’s all. Also, I don’t know a damned thing about politics.”

Bad taste. Remember when there was such a thing?

But today, rather than a former film actor, we have an ex-reality-TV star in the White House. And his leading ladies are going at it, reality-show style.

It’s a good time to remember that as recently as the 1980s, when the first Trump union made Donald and Ivana the toast of Manhattan’s gilded crowd, Wyman was exercising Victorian decorum. Even if decorum didn’t describe the Hollywood of the 1930s and ’40s.

Reagan played off his good looks and broad-shouldered Everyman charm well into his old age. But his early days in Hollywood? A parade of biographies and tell-alls describe him as a player.

From Elizabeth Taylor to Lana Turner to Marilyn Monroe, the Gipper was a guy who allegedly got around.

Wyman and Reagan fell in love on the set. Their marriage in 1940 was his first and her third. They divorced in 1949, after Wyman reportedly fell in love with another co-star, Lew Ayres.

She didn’t marry Ayres, but her part in “Johnny Belinda” helped her win an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1948. She went on to marry two more times — both times to the same man — before finally giving up on nuptials. She remained a star on the small screen, starring in the television series “Falcon Crest,” as her third ex-husband won the Cold War and championed conservative family values.

She finally broke her silence about Reagan when he died in 2004.

“America has lost a great president,” Wyman said. “And a great, kind and gentle man.”

Wyman died three years later in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at the age of 90. Or maybe it was 93. She wasn’t that forthcoming about her birthday either...

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BORN ON THIS DAY: JANE WYMAN

I have always said that for some reason actress Jane Wyman reminded me of my grandmother - my father's mother. Maybe it was the slightness of her build or in later years the similar hair styles, but to this day Wyman reminds me of her. However, Jane Wyman has always been a favorite actress of mine - whether in a musical or a comedy or a tense drama - Wyman could do it all. On this day, January 5th - Jane Wyman was born in 1917.

Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in St. Joseph, Missouri. Although her birthdate has been widely reported for many years as January 4, 1914, research by biographers and genealogists indicates she was born on January 5, 1917. The most likely reason for the 1914 year of birth is that she added to her age so as to be able to work and act while still a minor. She may have moved her birthday back by one day to January 4 so as to share the same birthday as her daughter, Maureen (born January 4, 1941) After Wyman's death, a release posted on her official website confirmed these details.

Her parents were Manning Jefferies Mayfield (1895–1922), a meal-company laborer, and Gladys Hope Christian (1895–1960), a doctor's stenographer and office assistant. In October 1921, her mother filed for divorce, and her father died unexpectedly the following year at age 27. After her father's death, her mother moved to Cleveland, Ohio, leaving her to be reared by foster parents, Emma (1866–1951) and Richard D. Fulks (1862–1928), the chief of detectives in Saint Joseph. She took their surname unofficially, including in her school records and, apparently, her first marriage certificate.

Her unsettled family life resulted in few pleasurable memories. Wyman later said, "I was raised with such strict discipline that it was years before I could reason myself out of the bitterness I brought from my childhood. In 1928, aged 11, she moved to southern California with her foster mother, but it is not known for certain if she attempted a career in motion pictures at this time, or if the relocation was due to the fact that some of Fulks' children also lived in the area. In 1930, the two moved back to Missouri, where Sarah Jane attended Lafayette High School in Saint Joseph. That same year she began a radio singing career, calling herself "Jane Durrell" and adding years to her birthdate to work legally since she would have been under age.

After dropping out of Lafayette in 1932, at age 15, she returned to Hollywood, taking on odd jobs as a manicurist and a switchboard operator, before obtaining small parts in such films as The Kid from Spain (as a "Goldwyn Girl"; 1932), My Man Godfrey (1936) and Cain and Mabel (1936). After changing her name from Jane Durrell to Jane Wyman, she began her career as a contract player with Warner Bros. in 1936 at age 19. Her big break came the following year, when she received her first starring role in Public Wedding.
Wyman finally gained critical notice in the film noir The Lost Weekend (1945). She was nominated for the 1946 Academy Award for Best Actress for The Yearling (1946), and won two years later for her role as a deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948).

She was also the first wife of future President Ronald Reagan, and she remained a friend to Nancy Reagan and the rest of the Reagan family for the rest of her life. Movies and television roles continued until Wyman basically retired in 1993. Her daughter died in 2001, and her ex husband Ronald Reagan died in 2004. Other than making appearances at the funerals, she remained out of the public eye. Jane Wyman lived out her remaining years quietly in California and died in 2007 at the age of 90...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: FINAL PICTURES OF THE STARS

This is a morbid idea for an article, but I thought it was an interesting enough topic for a collection of some of the final pictures of our favorite stars. If any of these pictures offend you, I do apologize...

Here is the great actress Jane Wyman leaving President Reagan's funeral in 2004. She died in 2007 at the age of 90:

Here is Eddie Cantor receiving an award from Governor of California Pat Brown in January of 1964. He died in October of that year at the age of 72:

Here is legendary actor James Cagney with a young Michael J. Fox from 1985. Cagney died the following year at the age of 86:

Here is the blonde bombshell Betty Hutton, celebrating her 86th birthday. Sadly, she died of cancer a month later:

Here is the last known picture of popular President Franklin D. Roosevelt a few days before he died on April 12, 1945. He was only 63:

Here is probably the saddest picture of the bunch. Actor Tyrone Power suffered a heart attack on the set of "Solomon and Sheba"(1958). He died on route to the hospital. He was only 44:

MOVIE TRAILER: THE LOST WEEKEND

Here is the movie trailer for one of the first "true" depictions of alcoholism on film. It is "The Lost Weekend"(1945) which won an Oscar for Ray Milland and also starred Jane Wyman...

JANE WYMAN - 1952

You don't normally associate Jane Wyman with singing and dancing, but here is a great number from the movie JUST FOR YOU...



clip courtesy of Jarbie