Jane Wyatt, the actress who put the human in Spock, is dead at the ripe old age of 96.
In the blossoming age of beginning television Jane was the prototypical housewife and mother in the landmark television series “Father Knows Best,” which starred another actor who was to become a television icon – Robert Young.
Before there was television she was already a well-known and loved actress on the big screen and on broadway, but it was her co-starring role with Robert Young on “Father Knows Best” that catapulted her to stardom and led her to become the first consecutive winner of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Emmy Award.
She won the hearts of scifi fans in the 1960s after she appeared in an episode of “Star Trek” as Spock’s mother, a role she reprised in 1986 in “The Voyage Home,” a Star Trek movie.
She has starred along side many of the giants and Hollywood heart-throbs of the 1930’s and 40’s before moving on to television including Fredric March in the stage production of “Autumn Garden,” also in films like “Great Expectations” (1934); “Lost Horizon” (1937); “None but the Lonely Heart (1944); “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947); “Task Force”; and of course “Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home” (1986).
After World War II, President Roosevelt asked Wyatt to help host a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet in the United States. That led to her being blacklisted by the arrogant and eventually discredited Senator Joseph McCarthy and his fear-mongering House On Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s.
Jane Wyatt, one of the grand dames of showbusiness, is survived by her sons Christopher and Michael Ward, three grandchildren and five great grandchildren.