Jane Wyman Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Height, Net Worth, Fast Facts

Wyman’s professional career began at age 16 in 1933, when she signed with Warner Bros. A popular contract player, she frequently played the leading lady, appearing in films such as Public Wedding (1937), Brother Rat (1938), its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940), Bad Men of Missouri (1941), Stage Fright (1950), So Big (1953), Magnificent Obsession (1954), and All That Heaven Allows (1955). She received four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress, winning for Johnny Belinda (1948). In her later years, she achieved continuing success on the soap opera Falcon Crest (1981–1990), portraying the role of villainous matriarch Angela Channing.

Wyman was the first wife of actor and future US President Ronald Reagan.

Jane Wyman Wiki, Biography

Sarah Jane Mayfield was born on January 5, 1917, in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Gladys Hope (née Christian; 1891–1960) and Manning Jeffries Mayfield (1895–1922). Her father was a meal company laborer and her mother was a doctor’s stenographer and office assistant. Wyman was an only child biologically, but she had two foster siblings, whom she would refer to when saying she was the youngest of three. Wyman’s birth parents were married in March 1916 in Jackson County, Missouri. The 1920 census showed her to be the only child from the marriage, and aged three years old on January 15, 1920, and living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In October 1921, her biological parents divorced and her father died unexpectedly three months later. After his death, her mother moved to Cleveland, Ohio, leaving her to be reared by foster parents, Emma (née Reiss)^[2][3] and Richard D. Fulks, the chief of detectives in Saint Joseph.^[4] She took their surname unofficially, including in her school records and on her marriage certificate to first husband Ernest Wyman.^[5]

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.”^[6]

In 1928, aged 11, she moved to Southern California with her foster mother. 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 because she was under-aged.

For many years, Wyman’s birthdate was widely reported to be January 4, 1914, but research by biographers and genealogists indicated that she was actually born three years later.
The most likely reason for the 1914 year of birth is that she added to her age in order to gain employment doing odd jobs and working as an actress, even though she was 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.^[10] After Wyman’s death, a release posted on her official website confirmed these details.

Personal life

Marriages

Wyman married five times

Ernest Wyman

Wyman married salesman Ernest Eugene Wyman in Los Angeles, California, on April 8, 1933. Wyman recorded her name as ‘Jane Fulks’ on the wedding certificate. She also listed foster parents Emma and Richard Fulks as her parents. In keeping with the tendency of making herself older than she really was, she gave her age as 19 on the document. Truthfully, she had turned 16 just three months prior. The couple would divorce after two years. Wyman kept her first husband’s surname professionally for the remainder of her life.^[5]

Myron Futterman

Wyman married Myron Martin Futterman, a dress manufacturer, in New Orleans on June 29, 1937. As Wyman wanted children but Futterman did not, they separated after only three months of marriage^[27] and divorced on December 5, 1938.

Ronald Reagan

In 1938, Wyman co-starred with Ronald Reagan in Brother Rat (1938), and its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940). They were engaged at the Chicago Theatre,^[29] and married on January 26, 1940, at the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather in Glendale, California.^[30] She and Reagan had three children; Maureen Elizabeth Reagan, their adopted son Michael Edward Reagan, and Christine Reagan (premature, lived one day June 26, 1947).^[31] Wyman, who was a registered Republican, stated that their break-up was due to a difference in politics (Ronald Reagan was still a Democrat at the time).^[32] She filed for divorce in 1948; the divorce was final in 1949 and Wyman leased a home in Palm Springs, California.^[33] In 1981, Ronald Reagan became the first divorcé to assume the nation’s highest office. This made Wyman the first former wife of an American president who was still living at the time that her former husband became president. Although she remained silent during Reagan’s political career, she told a newspaper interviewer in 1968 that this was not because she was bitter or because she did not agree with him politically:

I’ve always been a registered Republican. But it’s bad taste to talk about former husbands and former wives, that’s all. Also, I don’t know a damn thing about politics.

In spite of her divorce, according to her former personal assistant, Wyman still voted for her former husband in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.

Frederick Karger

Following her divorce from Reagan, Wyman married German-American Hollywood music director and composer Frederick M. “Fred” Karger on November 1, 1952, at El Montecito Presbyterian Church, Santa Barbara. They separated on November 7, 1954, and were granted an interlocutory divorce decree on December 7, 1954; the divorce was finalized on December 30, 1955. They remarried on March 11, 1961, and Karger divorced her again on March 9, 1965. According to The New York Times’ report of the divorce, the bandleader charged that the actress “had walked out on him.”^[35] Wyman had a stepdaughter, Terry, from Karger’s marriage to Patti Sacks.^[36]

Wyman, who had converted to Catholicism in 1953, never remarried.^[37] She was a member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California.

Later life

After Falcon Crest ended, Wyman made a guest appearance on the CBS series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and then completely retired from acting; she spent her retirement painting and entertaining friends. Wyman was a recluse and made only a few public appearances in her last years in part due to suffering from arthritis. Wyman also suffered from Type 1 diabetes from a very young age. She did attend her daughter’s funeral in 2001 after Maureen died of melanoma; Ronald Reagan was unable to attend due to his Alzheimer’s disease. She also attended the funeral of her long-time friend Loretta Young in 2000. Wyman broke her silence about her former husband upon his death in 2004. She issued an official statement that read, “America has lost a great president and a great, kind, and gentle man.” She also attended his funeral.^[26]

Death

Wyman died at the age of 90^[1] at her home in Rancho Mirage on September 10, 2007.^[39] Wyman’s son, Michael Reagan, released a statement saying:

I have lost a loving mother, my children Cameron and Ashley have lost a loving grandmother, my wife Colleen has lost a loving friend she called Mom and Hollywood has lost the classiest lady to ever grace the silver screen.^[40]

Wyman reportedly died in her sleep of natural causes. A member of the Dominican Order (as a lay tertiary) of the Catholic Church, she was buried in a nun’s habit.^[41] She was interred at Forest Lawn Mortuary and Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.^[1]

Daily Habits

Facebook, Instagram & Twitter

Net Worth

The Estimated Net worth is $80K – USD $85k.