Jane Wyman, R.I.P.

[dirac]

Jane Wyman has died at age 93.

It was 1936 when Warner Bros. signed Wyman to a long-term contract. She long remembered the first line she spoke as a chorus girl to show producer Dick Powell: ''I'm Bessie Fuffnik. I swim, ride, dive, imitate wild birds and play the trombone.''

Warner Bros. was notorious for typecasting its contract players, and Wyman suffered that fate. She recalled in 1968: ''For 10 years I was the wisecracking lady reporter who stormed the city desk snapping, `Stop the presses! I've got a story that will break this town wide open!'''

[papeetepatrick]

The whole obituary is very interesting, I knew few facts of her life. I've seen only 4 or 5 of the major films, but my best memory of her is as a toddler watching 'The Jane Wyman Show', which I loved.

[dirac]

I’m glad this obit notes her good singing voice.

Two other Oscar nominations as best actress came for her roles as a backwoods mother in “The Yearling” (1947), also starring Gregory Peck, and as a saintly nursemaid in “The Blue Veil” (1951), with Charles Laughton and a young Natalie Wood.

A capable singer — she sang on the radio in the 1930s — Ms. Wyman shared a hit record, “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” which she recorded with Bing Crosby in 1951 for the movie “Here Comes the Groom.” The song, a Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer composition, won a 1952 Oscar.

[cahill]

She was also a vert classy lady!

[miliosr]

She'll always be Angela Channing to me!

[dirac]

She'll always be Angela Channing to me!

Dear old Falcon Crest.

Remarkable how well she paired with Rock Hudson in The Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows. You wouldn't necessarily think so without seeing them first, but they were great together. She brings out his sweetness - maternal, but not in a creepy way.