Jane Wyman - The history.

[Richard Denault]

Where are you getting this stuff from? It just doesn't ring true and don't confuse the actors with their characters.

This is from David Selby's website when Jane Wyman died:

"As many of you may have heard, we have lost a great actress and a great, passionate, classy woman who was always very dear to me. She was the consummate professional, and you always knew where you stood with Jane... I sit here and the tears flow for a dear, dear person who was so kind to me and taught me so much. I loved her as did others who were blessed to cross her path — that is unless they were late or didn’t know their lines."

David is a good person and very sensitive. They are very beautiful words and he knew them.
He has written several books of poems and autobiographies and I am sure that if he had written the final soliloquy it would have been more exciting.
That after eight years working together, Richard and Angela's last scene ends with Richar with his back to Angela is very significant.
A picture is worth a thousand words

 

[Richard Denault]

That corroborates what so many actors have said about Jane: Lorenzo, David, Sarah Douglas, Simon MacCorkindale, all say in interviews how decent and down-to-earth she was, but you needed to earn her respect and to be on time! I don't know where all that other stuff comes from...

Jane Wyman turn by Dominick DunneVanity Fair, November 1989
"David Selby, who plays her are hers and has developed the closest friendship of any of the cast members with her, said," Never once has she asked to be excused from standing in hers while the other actors in the scene are having their close-ups of her. She would be upset if you did your close-up of her without her. She has never once been late. If we go out to dinner, we go to her favorite little spot de ella. I've never been to her apartment. "
Come on, what he says about Jane he could say about a supporting actor No personal praise is a wonderful actress, a great woman ..
. It reminds me of the previous King of Spain, he got along very badly with his wife, Sofia, and he always said that she was a great PROFESSIONAL, nothing about a good queen, a good wife, a great woman ...
He does not kiss her or touch her face

 

[Angela’s Cauldron]

David is a good person and very sensitive. They are very beautiful words and he knew them.
He has written several books of poems and autobiographies and I am sure that if he had written the final soliloquy it would have been more exciting.
That after eight years working together, Richard and Angela's last scene ends with Richar with his back to Angela is very significant.
A picture is worth a thousand words

1. They are acting and that scene has nothing to do with how they felt about each other in real life.
2. That wasn't their final scene together. The final scene was at the wedding when Richard kissed his mother on the cheek.

 

[Richard Denault]

1. They are acting and that scene has nothing to do with how they felt about each other in real life.
2. That wasn't their final scene together. The final scene was at the wedding when Richard kissed his mother on the cheek.

Let's see in the last scene alone Lance and Angela shake hands In the last scene
Selby turns his back on Jane
The difference is obvious
In season four when Richard indicates to Charlotte Maggie's biological mother whom Angela has made her addicted to, that she should not return to the racecourse
He is so affectionate, she takes his hand, smiles .

 

[Caryscott]

Begs the question what if Jane had best the "first lady' to the 40th President? I always thought she had an uncanny resemblance to Nancy.

Jane Wyman was the first Mrs. Reagan and was 4 years older than Nancy so that makes her the prototype Mrs. Reagan not the other way around. Reagan definitely had a type. Both also had difficult childhoods and weren’t known for being particularly maternal. As for Wyman, not much is known about her first two husbands, given she was 16 when she married the first one I’m not sure we could generalize much from that one beyond she wanted to get free. Reagan, Fred Karger and Greg Bautzer, who she dated, were all pretty dashing. Their other women included Susan Hayward, Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Ginger Rogers. Certainly neither Reagan or Karger had $$$ though they were reasonably accomplished.

I can’t picture Jane Wyman fussing over seating plans, menus and china for free. Reagan was always clear he was divorced because she divorced him in the aftermath of the death of their daughter Christine.

 

[Caryscott]

Sorry, my English, I use Google Translate It's not the profession, it's the personality.
Meryl Streep and Audrey Hepburn very good mothers and wonderful actresses
Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Jane Wyman no.
They were very ambitious and like many people in many professions being STARS not actresses was the goal of their lives.
In the case of Jane Wyman that gives her a certain emotional coldness that shows through in her role and I refer to what the actress who voiced her in Spanish commented
Pilar Gentil: It's nice to play, "she says," but I don't see anything special; he has a very strong line, which does not change.

Of course Wyman’s best known film roles are highly sympathetic, nothing like Angela Channing. They aren’t cold at all. Her warmth was often commented on when she hosted her own anthology series in the fifties.

Wyman wanted and achieved success as both a star and an actress. She has talked about wanting to act from the inside out and her research for roles like Johnny Belinda where she wore ear plugs and studied with the deaf is well known.

Not sure a voice over actress in any country is an authority I would lend much credibility to but Wyman had never had a series playing a recurring character or played the same role for more than a year let alone 9 years. I’m sure it presented challenges for her.

 

[Caryscott]

I don't think she was very well liked by the Falcon Crest actors.
Neither went to her funeral.
Not when she got a star in Pasadena I can't imagine her as the wife of a politician

We know. Irrespective of what those actors say and the fact that you weren’t there you have repeatedly tried to gaslight the members of this forum into believing she wasn’t liked by her colleagues when so many of them have spoken on the record fondly about working with her.

What star in Pasadena? Do you mean the one in Palm Springs which was initiated by former colleagues who also raised the $$$ to pay for it. Ana Alicia reportedly sent a nice note which was read at the ceremony. It was awarded posthumously so I don’t think Jane Wyman missed anyone but it was a lovely gesture by former colleagues who lived in the area. You trying to manipulate their kindness to justify your mean spirited speculations says a lot more about your character than hers.

I don’t think she could either. While like Nancy she sat on the SAG board for a time it wasn’t something she had a sustained interest in. She was always clear she knew nothing about politics though according to Michael she made donation towards Reagan’s campaigns. I can’t imagine her picking china or arranging seating plans as First Lady. She would have hated it.

 

[Caryscott]

According to her children, she was not the mother of the year
Michael Regan in his autograph gives a disgusting image of Jane Wyman. He describes her as a cruel nd cold mother who abandoned her children to pursue her career, her marriages, and her dogs.
Gene Nelson, Mauren Regan's boyfriend, recounted:
When I met Maureen, she was a woman who suffered a lot, who did not deserve all the disasters that had happened to her. Her mother, Jane Wyman, had practically abandoned her and her brother Michael as children, enrolling them in boarding schools when they were just five years old, in order to continue their careers without interruption, which was what really interested her.
When he deigned to speak to them, they were so hurtful and brutal that they usually ended up crying. Jane has a tongue like a razor and is capable of wounding and destroying. She's like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, always playing the big game

Gene Nelson was a former Warners contract player. He and Jane both appeared in Starlift in 1951. He was 21 years older than Maureen. If they met on the set of Starlift Maureen would have been 10. I’m guessing Maureen’s relationship with him wasn’t particularly welcomed by her mother. Hard to imagine why.
Regardless of his credibility I think there were control issues with both kids. Keeping their children too close was a mistake for both Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich’s daughters who had a front row seats to their mother’s lives and inadequate educations they came to resent.

Maureen was pretty pragmatic about it and both she and Michael seemed to have come to terms with their Mother. Donna Reed she was not but no one got strapped in to bed, choked out or went on trial for murdering their mother’s mobster boyfriend so while it could have been better (particularly for Michael who was victimized by a predator) it could have been worse.

 

[Caryscott]

An affectionate but realistic recollection of Jane Wyman from Susan Sullivan a few months ago:

When you started on Falcon Crest in 1981, Jane Wyman was the show’s grand older lady — although she was only 64!

“I certainly did not think of Jane as an old lady, but I also thought that short gray wig she was wearing was horrible. Jane didn’t want to have to bother with all that hairstyling baloney. She was a real actor, an artist who always knew her lines. God forbid you had a scene with her and didn’t know your lines!”

The show started the year her ex-husband Ronald Reagan became president. How did she handle questions about him?

“It was understood that he was not to be mentioned, and it was never brought up. She was a really strong, direct woman whom you didn’t mess with. You never were quite able to get past the protective plexiglass screen she put up around her. She liked to work in the morning and have a glass of wine when she got home. My kind of gal!”

Susan Sullivan
March 15, 2024
In Touch Weekly

 

[Richard Denault]

Nobody denies that she was a great professional and a good actress.
"You were never quite able to get past the protective plexiglass screen she put up around her. "
The same thing she said in her memoirs to Hola in 1988.
"As for the rest, as for Jane Wyman, the truth is, despite the seven years that we have been working together, we don't know each other much. I haven't dated her outside of filming of activities related to the series. When we talk, we talk about quite a few things.inconsequential. I don't know for example, now she just moved house and so did that our conversations lately have been about painters, furniture, new upholstery and
things like that. I can't say I know the real Jane at all.
Margaret Ladd at Cine Tele Revue in 1989
With Jane (Wyman) my relationship is different but just as wonderful and unique. Jane is very distant. And always stays away from others.
This 9-20 return scene is very significant
Dinner is served and instead of taking Richard's arm and having Lance and Pilar follow her, she leaves alone. Followed by Chao Li

 

[Richard Denault]

Ana Alicia has always spoken very respectfully of Jane.
Jane Wyman was a pro, but never very social according to Ana - Alicia. She mentioned the Grand Dame of Falcon Crest hardly hung out with the other stars, but was always fair and correct
When she died she told Thomas : Ours was the relationship of two actresses who respected one another
But in this Facebook comment she was more sincere.
Jane was very reserved. When she laughed, it came from a very deep part of her. I would never describe as laughing, more like assessing.
The most human moment I experienced with Jane was off the set in her beautiful Santa Monica condominium. She had invited me there and I felt very lucky. We sat down and had a very serious conversation about our horrendous toes. We were both toe-challenged. She because of her diabetes. Me because of my hereditary genes. It was one of the few times that I saw her unguarded self. She looked very young and very visible. I think we did chuckle a bit.
After eight years of working together, the most human moment was talking about her feet.!!!!!!!

 

[Richard Denault]

Bob Crutchfield, Lorimar's vice president of Facebook advertising, commented.
"I was very close to Jane Wyman from 1967 until her death here in Palm Springs"
I am sad to say that I was one of only a few of her Hollywood peers that attended her funeral here.
She was a really great lady but she could also be a really ballsy broad when she needed to be. I loved her very much.
"She was pretty much a recluse. She had a housekeeper and a driver to take her to have her hair and nails done at a little out of the way salón. Dementia made the last couple of years of her life very sad. often she wasn't really sure who I was - even though we laughed at the horrors of attending all those old award shows in Hollywood,
Lorenzo Lamas commented to Thomas
About one month before she passed away, Lorenzo recalled phoning Jane's home in Palm Springs. She was resting and could not come to the phone, but her butler conveyed her message from ella to him. “She told me that she loved me very much and she appreciated that I had taken the time to call.”

It is clear that Lorenzo did not visit her and that her butler told him that out of courtesy.
And what Lorenzo told Thomas
. “Jane Wyman was the grandmother I never had.”

 

[Caryscott]

These (and there are numerous others) are all affectionate accounts of her relationship with her colleagues. The portrait that emerges is consistently of a kind and considerate professional woman who was a little rigid and guarded with colleagues.

Trying to infer the personal relationships of actors from the blocking for their characters in filmed scenes is beyond grasping at straws.

Jane was 64 almost 65 when Falcon Crest went on the air she had a lifetime of professional relationships already and some old friends like Eve Arden, Cesar Romero and Eddie Albert ended up on Falcon Crest. A few folks from her first TV series even turned up. Playing cards with the crew isn’t a page from the Diva handbook last I checked.

In Crutchfield’s only interview that I have seen he talks about when she missed those two episodes in Season 5 and he went to visit her in the hospital she asked that he not come back. Would she really have wanted visitors? With people who have dementia visitors often create stress and discomfort.

Life marches on, actors get cast in other roles. They remain bonded by their experience together but they don’t see or talk to one another for long periods of time. Trying to turn it into a conspiracy or some sort of judgement is just absurd. David, Abby, Simon, Susan, Morgan, Ana, Margaret, Lorenzo, Sara, William and others (even Robert) have all said positive things about Jane over the years. There will always be detractors, that’s life nobody is liked by everybody and everyone has a bad day or gets it wrong sometimes. Check out Sandra Bernhard and Morgan Fairchild recently. That’s showbiz (to quote Morgan). Follow their example and lead with kindness.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Begs the question what if Jane had best the "first lady' to the 40th President? I always thought she had an uncanny resemblance to Nancy.

Libra Rising.

 

[Caryscott]

Libra Rising.

We probably would have been spared the sour embarrassment that was “My Turn”. I recently came across an interview Nancy did with the LA Times to promote it. When asked if she spoke to Jane, Nancy responded:

“No. She leads a very solitary life.”

That explains it?. Apparently solitary people didn’t have phones circa 1989. Jane’s payback for, by Nancy’s own account, being “nice” to her. The accounting of how many cavities Michael had 30 years ago (he was 44 in 1989) had to be read to be believed. So petty. But to follow my own advice I do think Nancy was close to Maureen and blacked out scrapbooks and pet names (Nancyvita) aside Nancy seemed to finally let it go. Jane didn’t , as far as anyone knows, take the bait so I’m surprised it went on as long as it did. There’s an audio interview with David Selby on YouTube where he mentions that Jane told him once that there was no bad feelings between her and Ron (Reagan). What is it she would have been angry about anyway? He had apparently promised not to re-marry first but given the shotgun circumstances I doubt she held that against him. There is an account of him literally scurrying off to call Jane to tell her he won’t be keeping his word after Nancy tells him she’s pregnant. Fabricated I’m sure. Jane says selling her tv show episodes to ABC in 1961 is what gave her financial independence. His didn’t come until they sold the Malibu ranch the first year he was Governor in 1966. So it wasn’t a money thing. What’s the great quote attributed to her by Errol Morris: “I'm so bored with him, I'll either kill him or kill myself." He seems like he was probably sweet and he was by all accounts quite heartbroken but I don’t see Wyman wanting him back so she could play First Lady.

 

[Richard Denault]

You never were quite able to get past the protective plexiglass screen she put up around her.

Said Susan Sullivan
And David
David Selby, «Without denying Jane Wyman's professional and artistic status, I consider her divinity to be out of place. Despite her CORRECT BEHAVIOR, she does not integrate with us. He has built a wall on one side of which she stands and on the other, the other artists
Protective plexiglass screen or wall very similar concepts
Joan Bennet was a Hollywood star who starred in Dark Shadows, the series that made David a youth idol. She died in 1990.
Kathryn Leigh Scott one of the protagonists went out of her way to put flowers on her grave. She shared that emotional moment with all the fans of the series.
On our way home, we drove a few miles north to Lyme, CT, to lay flowers on the gravesite of Joan Bennett, our beloved doyenne of Collinwood.
None of the cast members attended Jane's daughter's funeral or when her star was placed in Palm Springs.

 

[Richard Denault]

od forbid you had a scene with her and didn’t know your lines

David
that is unless they were late or didn’t know their lines

She liked to work in the morning and have a glass of wine

Cine Tele Revue 19899
“She refuses to arrest smoking,” says David Selby, “and she still allows herself a glass of whiskey when she receives a visitor!”
It looks like a script
Dacid and Susan's comments are very similar

 

[Caryscott]

Said Susan Sullivan
And David
David Selby, «Without denying Jane Wyman's professional and artistic status, I consider her divinity to be out of place. Despite her CORRECT BEHAVIOR, she does not integrate with us. He has built a wall on one side of which she stands and on the other, the other artists
Protective plexiglass screen or wall very similar concepts
Joan Bennet was a Hollywood star who starred in Dark Shadows, the series that made David a youth idol. She died in 1990.
Kathryn Leigh Scott one of the protagonists went out of her way to put flowers on her grave. She shared that emotional moment with all the fans of the series.
On our way home, we drove a few miles north to Lyme, CT, to lay flowers on the gravesite of Joan Bennett, our beloved doyenne of Collinwood.
None of the cast members attended Jane's daughter's funeral or when her star was placed in Palm Springs.
View attachment 53662

Lovely not sure what it has to do with Jane Wyman. Did they know Maureen well? Were they invited to her funeral? Probably not to both questions so what is your point? Should they have crashed it to satisfy your prurient interests?

Agreed there is a consistency to the portrait of the woman that emerges. In the 60’s Wyman wrote a piece for Guideposts about overcoming her innate shyness. Sounds like she didn’t quite master it despite her best efforts. Still the affection of her colleagues for her is self evident. She wasn’t looking to be canonized by you or anyone else.

She was Jane Wyman not Joan Bennett though in her second lead days she did co-star with Joan’s sister Constance. Were they in some sort of competition none of us know about? How contrived..

 

[Caryscott]

David
that is unless they were late or didn’t know their lines

Cine Tele Revue 19899
“She refuses to arrest smoking,” says David Selby, “and she still allows herself a glass of whiskey when she receives a visitor!”
It looks like a script
Dacid and Susan's comments are very similar

Cine Tele Revu???? Don’t have any issues but I’m going to take a pass on that one. Would have been done in English then translated into French and then translated back into English. The chances of info going awry in that scenario is pretty good. Though she definitely was an inveterate smoker. Was frequently photographed with cigarette in hand in the 40’s and 50’s. She was supposedly pretty athletic beyond dancing she apparently played tennis and golf. Apparently she smoked right up until the end.

Just watched a few clips of Bette Davis promoting her book This n That on UK television circa the 80’s always with a cigarette. They were from a different time.

 

[Bitterpig Bitterpig]

An affectionate but realistic recollection of Jane Wyman from Susan Sullivan a few months ago:

When you started on Falcon Crest in 1981, Jane Wyman was the show’s grand older lady — although she was only 64!

“I certainly did not think of Jane as an old lady, but I also thought that short gray wig she was wearing was horrible. Jane didn’t want to have to bother with all that hairstyling baloney. She was a real actor, an artist who always knew her lines. God forbid you had a scene with her and didn’t know your lines!”

The show started the year her ex-husband Ronald Reagan became president. How did she handle questions about him?

“It was understood that he was not to be mentioned, and it was never brought up. She was a really strong, direct woman whom you didn’t mess with. You never were quite able to get past the protective plexiglass screen she put up around her. She liked to work in the morning and have a glass of wine when she got home. My kind of gal!”

Susan Sullivan
March 15, 2024
In Touch Weekly

That sounds so Principal!