Jane Wyman died the other day. That fact likely doesn’t mean much to many of today’s moviegoers. I’m not sure it means anything to those even of my generation.

But Wyman once was a force in Hollywood. Besides her eight-year marriage to Ronald Reagan (which just goes to show that anyone can make a mistake), she was popular, and powerful, enough to snare a number of high-profile roles during her career.

She even won an Oscar, for 1948’s “Johnny Belinda” – in which, foreshadowing Holly Hunter’s 1993 Oscar for “The Piano,” she never spoke a word (her character was both deaf and mute).

Typical of her no-nonsense attitude, Wyman responded to winning the Oscar by saying, “I won this award by keeping my mouth shut, and I think I’ll do it again.”

In a timely bit of programming, Turner Classic Movies is devoting Friday to a Jane Wyman movie marathon. Beginning at 6 a.m. with 1944’s “The Doughgirls,” the cable channel will screen the following films:

7:45 a.m.: The Lost Weekend (1945)
9:30 a.m.: Cheyenne (1947)
11:15 a.m.: Johnny Belinda (1948)
1 p.m.: The Lady Takes a Sailor (1949)
2:45 p.m.: A Kiss in the Dark (1949)
4:15 p.m.: Here Comes the Groom (1951)
6:15 p.m.: Let’s Do It Again (1953)

It’s not often that we get the opportunity to see a representation of someone’s career in a single shot. Not that I’m going to get up at 5:50 in the morning and sit glued to my TV all day.

That’s why the great god of physics created DVR.

Below: Jane Wyman and then-husband Ronald Reagan pose for pix on Sept. 13, 1941, with their daughter Maureen Elizabeth.

Associated Press

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