Topic: Jane Wyatt

Jane Waddington Wyatt (August 12, 1910 – October 20, 2006) was an American actress perhaps best known for her role as the housewife and mother on the television series Father Knows Best and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the science fiction television show, Star Trek. Wyatt was a three-time Emmy-winner.

Jane Wyatt was born on August 12, 1910 in Campgaw (now part of Mahwah, New Jersey), but was raised in New York City. Her father, Christopher Billopp Wyatt, Jr., was a Wall Street investment banker, and her mother, the former Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington, was a drama critic for the Catholic World. One of her ancestors, Rufus King, was a signer of the U.S. Constitution, a U.S. Senator and ambassador, and the Federalist candidate in the 1816 United States presidential election. She was also a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt and the poet Harry Crosby, through their shared descent from Philip Livingston, also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

While in New York City, Wyatt attended the fashionable Chapin School and later attended two years of Barnard College. After leaving Barnard, she joined the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where for six months she played a varied assortment of roles.