Actress Jane Wyatt, best known for her idealized suburban mother in the 1950s television series Father Knows Best, died Friday, Oct. 20, at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air. Wyatt was either 95 or 96, depending on the source. Several years ago, she had suffered — and recovered from — a stroke.
On the big screen, Wyatt failed to make much of an impact, usually playing pretty but innocuous leading ladies in films of the 1930s and 1940s. The most famous of those is Frank Capra's 1937 romantic fantasy Lost Horizon, adapted by Robert Riskin from James Hilton's novel, in which she exudes such powerful charm that British diplomat Ronald Colman braves avalanches and snowstorms to return to her arms in Shangri-La.
Among her other big-screen roles are Estella in the cheap 1934 version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations; as one of the women in Cary Grant's life in the 1944 melodrama None But the Lonely Heart; and as Dana Andrews' wife in Elia Kazan's well-received 1947 courthouse drama Boomerang!.
Wyatt won three Emmys for her Father Knows Best Never Never Suburbia Mom. Her co-star was former second-rank MGM leading man Robert Young. The series ran from 1954 to 1960.
About five years ago, I briefly met Wyatt at a party at the house of film historian Anthony Slide and UCLA film preservationist Robert Gitt. She was courteous, but had a distinctively aloof, almost imperial, manner. She was definitely not my — and probably nobody's — idea of an American suburban grandma. Slide later told me she was an ardent advocate of liberal causes.
My point: If Wyatt's traditional suburban mom fooled people into believing she was playing herself, her three Father Knows Best Emmys were well deserved.
The more I read about Jane Wyatt, the more I admire her.