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09-11-2007, 08:14 AM
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Jane Wyman was named best actress at the Oscars in 1949
Jane Wyman, one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1940s and '50s and the first wife of former US President Ronald Reagan, has died at 93.

She was nominated for four Oscars, winning once for her role as the deaf rape victim in 1948's Johnny Belinda.

Wyman, who also appeared in TV soap opera Falcon Crest, died on Monday at her home in Palm Springs in California.

She married Reagan, then a fellow actor, in 1940. They had two children and divorced eight years later.

Wyman had appeared alongside Reagan in two of her early hits - the 1938 comedy Brother Rat and its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby.

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Wyman said politics "built a barrier" between her and Reagan
Her popularity rose after the war, and her first Oscar nomination came in 1947 for her role opposite Gregory Peck in The Yearling.

She won two years later for her moving performance as a woman who could not speak or hear in Johnny Belinda.

Her success continued in the 1950s, and she established herself as one of the finest dramatic actresses of her time with The Glass Menagerie, Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright and Here Comes the Groom with Bing Crosby.

Further Oscar nominations came her way for The Blue Veil and Magnificent Obsession.

Her film career ended in 1969 when she co-starred with Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason in How to Commit Marriage.

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She found a new audience in 1980s TV soap Falcon Crest
From 1981 to 1990, she was best known as Angela Channing, the Napa Valley winery owner who ruled the roost on Falcon Crest.

Married five times in all, Wyman rarely discussed her split from Reagan, but did say they split because "politics built a barrier between us".

"I tried to make his interests mine, but finally there was nothing to sustain our marriage," she said.

The couple had a daughter, Maureen, who died in 2001, and adopted a son, Michael, now a talk show host.

BBC