By RICHARD SEVERO
New York Times

Jane Wyman, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a victimized deaf woman in the 1948 movie “Johnny Belinda,” played a fierce matriarch in the 1980s television series “Falcon Crest” and was the first wife of President Ronald Reagan, died Monday at her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 90.

Her death was confirmed by Jonathan Bernstein, a family spokesman.

Ms. Wyman started her movie career in the 1930s playing wisecracking chorus girls before winning the Academy Award and three other best-actress Oscar nominations between 1947 to 1955.

She rekindled her star power in her 60s, playing Angela Channing, the domineering owner of a Northern California winery in “Falcon Crest,” which ran from 1981 to 1990.

She had met Mr. Reagan in the late 1930s and appeared with him in the comedy “Brother Rat” (1938). They were married in 1940, had a daughter, Maureen, and then adopted a son, Michael, before divorcing in 1948.

Ms. Wyman’s Oscar came for her sensitive performance in “Johnny Belinda” (1948), in which she played a deaf woman whose pregnancy resulting from a rape causes a scandal. Archer Winston, writing in The New York Post, called her performance “surpassingly beautiful.”

“It is all the more beautiful in its accomplishment without words,” he added.

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