Jane Wyatt (born August 12, 1911 in Campgaw, New Jersey) is an American actress. Her most famous roles were as Ronald Colman's love interest in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937); as Margaret Anderson, the mother in the 1950s sitcom Father Knows Best; and as Amanda Grayson, Mr. Spock's mother on Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Wyatt came from a New York family of social distinction (her father was a Wall Street investment banker and her mother was a drama critic, while one of her ancestors, Rufus King, had been a Presidential candidate). Her mother was a Catholic convert, and her father ultimately converted as well, although Jane did not attend Catholic schools.
Jane was raised from the age of three months in New York City, attended the fashionable Chapin School and later Barnard College. After two years of college, she left to join the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where for six months she played a varied assortment of roles.
One of her first jobs on Broadway was as understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of "Trade Winds" - a career move that cost her her slot on the New York Social Register. Wyatt made the transition from stage to screen and was placed under contract at Universal (and co-starred in Frank Capra's Columbia film Lost Horizon on a loan from Universal).
In the 1950s, she co-starred with Robert Young in Father Knows Best, the classic TV sitcom chronicling the life and times of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield.
She lives at home in Bel Air, California, having outlasted almost all of her peers. Her husband, Edgar Bethune Ward (also a Catholic convert) died the day before what would have been their 65th wedding anniversary in 2000. They had 2 sons.
She suffered a stroke some years ago but has recovered remarkably well.
Lost Horizon (1937)
