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Emmy-Winning Actress Jane Wyatt Dies at 96

Jane Wyatt, who won three Emmys portraying quintessential TV mom Margaret Anderson on the comedy series Father Knows Best, died Friday of natural causes at her home in Bel-Air, California; she was 96. Born in New Jersey, Wyatt embarked on an acting career after a rather formal, upscale education, and worked both on Broadway and at the Berkshire Playhouse in Massachusetts. A contract offer from Universal Pictures in 1934 took her to Hollywood, and her most notable film role was as the eternally youthful Shangri-La beauty opposite Ronald Colman in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). Wyatt also appeared alongside Cary Grant in None But the Lonely Heart and Gregory Peck in Gentleman's Agreement; though never a major star, she found work continually playing warm, understanding, compassionate women. When the nascent medium of television launched in the early 50s, Wyatt found an even more successful career there, and in 1954 landed the part of Margaret Anderson in the domestic sitcom Father Knows Best, opposite Robert Young (who ranked #6 on TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time"). Helping set the mold of the perfect television mother of the 50s, she was the most capable and serene of TV moms, dispensing wisdom and dinner with equal aplomb to her three children and all-knowing husband. The role won her three consecutive Emmys, and the show only grew in popularity once it went into reruns after ending in 1960. Wyatt worked almost exclusively in television for the rest of her career, and enjoyed a certain cult status for playing the mother of Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series (she reprised the role in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). Wyatt is survived by her two sons with businessman Edgar Ward, whom she married in 1935 and who passed away in 2000.

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