Born in Campgaw, New Jersey, Jane Waddington 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). Jane was raised from the age
of three months in New York City and 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 an
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, where she made her film debut in
director
James Whale's
One More River (1934). She went
back and forth between Universal and Broadway (and co-starred in
Frank Capra's Columbia film
Lost Horizon (1937) on loan out from
Universal). In the 1950s, she co-starred with
Robert Young in
Father Knows Best (1954),
the classic sitcom chronicling the life and times of the Anderson
family in the Midwestern town of Springfield. Jane Wyatt died at age 96
of natural causes at her home in Bel-Air, California, on October 20,
2006.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles(1992)as Older Vicky
Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes(1989)as Alice Leacock
Baby Boom(1988)as Margaret Anderson
St. Elsewhere(1982)as Katherine Auschlander
Hotel(1983)as Agnes Simpson, Katherine Jenkins
The Bell Telephone Hour(1959)
Father Knows Best(1954)
None But the Lonely Heart(1944)
Finding Shangri-La(2007)
Archive of American Television(1997)as Self
Frank Capra's American Dream(1997)as Self - Interviewee: Actor
The Silent Feminists: America's First Women Directors(1993)as Narrator
TV We Love(2025)as Self
Compression(1995)as Self
History of the Sitcom(2021)as Margaret Anderson
Pioneers of Television(2008)as Margaret Anderson - Father Knows Best
Love, Hate & Propaganda: The Cold War(2011)as Margaret Anderson in 'Father Knows Best'
