Screen legend Jane Wyman celebrates her 92nd birthday today, January 4th.  This talented St. Joseph, Missouri-born actress, who retired from acting in 1993, is a veteran of over one hundred screen and TV appearances.  A Best Actress Oscar winner in 1949 for Johnny Belinda, (and nominee three other times), Jane Wyman was at home in a western as she was in a musical or a comedy, or in the tough dramas and romantic big-screen soap operas that became her specialty.  TV fans fondly recall her multi-year run in the high-class nighttime soap Falcon Crest during the 1980s.  The rediscovery of classic movies from the ’30s and the ’40s going on in pop culture at the time allowed Miss Wyman’s new TV fans to become familiar with the performances that made her famous decades earlier, and which still bring new fans to her movies today.

Jumping once again into our photographic time machine, in the early 1950s Jane Wyman was an attractive and famous three-time (or possibly only two — info varies) divorcee, her most recent ex-husband being actor Ronald Reagan; their eight-year marriage ended in 1948.  In April of 1952 she announced her engagement to young — eleven years younger than she was — Travis Kleefield, raising some eyebrows around the nation.  Kleefield (aka Kleefeld) wasn’t in the picture as the future Mr. Wyman for long; in November of that same year she married a different fellow, Hollywood musical director Fred Karger, to whom she was married for two years, then divorced, then remarried six years later for another four years.  She never married again.

The spurned Mr. Kleefeld didn’t put himself on the shelf.  He began showing up in the company of a succession of glamorous starlets, squiring the likes of Joan Tyler (slaps comedian George Jessel with a paternity suit in 1961), Sheila Connolly (Irish Liz Taylor-lookalike and later Mrs. Guy Madison), and Elaine Stewart (under contract to MGM and in 1963 marries Merrill Heatter of Heatter & Quigley, producers of a slew of TV game shows) to all the popular Hollywood nightspots of the time.

Though perhaps unlucky in love, Mr. Kleefeld was considerably more fortunate when he decided to take the stage name of Tony Travis and embark on a singing career.  As Tony he made a number of albums for RCA and also had a brief acting career in the late 50s, including the role of a singing juvenile delinquent in The Beatniks (1960), which attained cult status through its spoofing on TV’s Mystery Science Theater.  Especially beloved is Travis’ rendition of a song about sideburns, which you can view here.

But I digress.  This post is supposed to be about Jane Wyman!  She’s happily retired now in one of California’s desert communities, and we wish her well today.  Happy Birthday, Jane!