JANE WYMAN SHE MADE EVERYONE Better

THE OSCAR WINNER TAUGHT HER CHILDREN TO VALUE HARD WORK AND PERSEVERANCE

- Alison Gaylin

With a best actress Oscar on her shelf and a lucrative contract as the host of TV’s Fireside Theatre, Jane Wyman had few money worries. Yet in 1955, when her 10-year-old son Michael Reagan asked for a bicycle, she wasn’t quick to buy it for him. “She said, ‘Do you love it enough to get a job?’ ” Michael remembers to Closer, adding that his mother only agreed to get him the Schwinn if he used it to deliver newspapers and pay her back with the money he earned. “She said, ‘I build men. I don’t build boys.’ ”