Jane Wyatt

Jane Waddington Wyatt was born in Mahwah, New Jersey, on August 12, 1910,  was a three-time Emmy Award-winning American film and television actress.

Wyatt was born in Campgaw (now part of Mahwah), Bergen County, New Jersey, but moved to New York City at three months old. Her father was Christopher Billop Wyatt Jr., a Wall Street investor, and her mother Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington, a theater critic for the Catholic World. She was educated at The Chapin School and then Barnard College. After two years, she dropped out and entered the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where she performed for six months in various roles.

She had three siblings: Christopher III, Elizabeth, and Monica. She was also a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt and the poet Harry Crosby, all of whom were descendants of Philip Livingston, one of the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Although one of her first suitors was John D. Rockefeller III, on November 9, 1935, Wyatt married investment broker Edgar Bethune Ward. The couple had met in the late 1920s, spending a weekend as guests of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park. They had three children and the marriage lasted until his death on November 8, 2000.

One of her first Broadway theater jobs was as an understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of Trade Winds. With favorable reviews on Broadway and known for her understated beauty, Wyatt moved from theater to film, where she played her most famous role at the time in the 1937 Frank Capra film, Lost Horizon, opposite Ronald Colman. Other notable films that same year included Gentleman's Agreement (opposite Gregory Peck), None but the Lonely Heart (with Cary Grant), and Boomerang (with Dana Andrews).

Her film career suffered due to her outspoken opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy, a leading figure in the McCarthy era. Her career was temporarily damaged by her hosting a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet during World War II, despite having done so at the request of President Roosevelt. As a result, she returned to her theatrical roots in New York for a time, appearing in plays such as Lillian Hellman's The Autumn Garden, alongside Fredric March.
From 1954 to 1960, she co-starred with Robert Young in Father Knows Best, a TV series about the life of the Anderson family in Springfield, a Midwestern city. She won the Emmy for Best Actress three years in a row for this performance.

Jane Wyatt is known for her role as Margaret Anderson in the television series "Father Knows Best," but the series also began as a radio show in 1949. Additionally, Wyatt appeared on the radio show "Family Theatre," where she played a mother struggling to raise her children properly, in an episode titled "Violets for Courage."

In short, Jane Wyatt had a radio role, both with "Father Knows Best" and "Family Theatre."
The television version of "Father Knows Best" was based on a radio show that first aired in 1949, where Jane Wyatt played Margaret Anderson.

Wyatt was also a part of this show, appearing in the episode "Violets for Courage," where she played a mother facing trials over her children's upbringing, alongside Robert Ryan.

Wyatt died on October 20, 2006, in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, of natural causes at his home in Bel-Air, California, at the age of 96. His funeral was held at St. Martin of Tours Church in Brentwood, California.