from Zap2it.com

Jane Wyman, the Academy Award-winning actress whose long and distinguished film and television career was nearly overshadowed by her real-life role as the first wife of actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan, died this morning. She was 90.

Wyman died at her home in Rancho Mirage of age-related causes, said Virginia Zamboni, a longtime friend.

Wyman's son, radio personality Michael Reagan, said in a statement: "I have lost a loving mother; my children, Cameron and Ashley, have lost a loving grandmother; my wife, Colleen, has lost a loving friend she called Mom; and Hollywood has lost the classiest lady to ever grace the silver screen."

After arriving in Hollywood from St. Louis, Mo., in the mid-1930s, Wyman learned her craft as a contract player before getting a crack at the major roles that would secure her reputation as a star. She won an Oscar playing a deaf-mute rape victim in 1948's "Johnny Belinda" and was nominated for her performances in "The Yearling" (1946), "The Blue Veil" (1951) and "Magnificent Obsession" (1954).

In the 1950s, the early days of television, she staked out a career in that medium with her own half-hour dramatic anthology show. And years after her film career waned, she became familiar to millions more television viewers as the matriarch-you-love-to-hate in the long-running 1980s nighttime soap opera "Falcon Crest."

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