Jane Wyatt, who died Friday at 96, burned her way into America’s collective memory as Margaret Anderson, the supportive mother and wife on the TV show “Father Knows Best,” which ran for eight seasons in the 1950s and ever since in reruns.

The dignified yet deferring Anderson personified the 1950s stay-at-home mother, but Wyatt was very different, a working actress who dropped out of college – and consequently was dropped from the New York Social Register – to become a Broadway actress.

She won three Emmys for playing Anderson. She also made dozens of appearances in movies, including playing Estella in “Great Expectations” (1934) and Dr. Spock’s mother in “Star Trek IV” (1986).

Wyatt grew up in Manhattan, in a socially prominent family whose ancestors on both sides included luminaries from the Revolutionary War. Her mother was a prominent Catholic essayist and her father was a lawyer.

Wyatt often went to the theater and acted in productions at the Chapin School. She matriculated at Barnard College in 1928 but dropped out and enrolled in the Apprentice School of the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, Mass. Her first appearance on Broadway came two years later, as an understudy in “The Vinegar Tree.”

After a series of minor roles, Wyatt had her first major role, in “Dinner at Eight,” on Broadway and then on tour. Several more Broadway roles followed. Estella in “Great Expectations” was a small part, but in 1937 Wyatt was featured in the film version of “Lost Horizon,” which she also had starred in on Broadway. Critics seemed to find her apple-pie good looks unconvincing for one supposedly raised in a lamasery.

Thereafter, Wyatt juggled Hollywood and Broadway and had success in both. Of the film “None But the Lonely Heart,” in which she starred opposite Cary Grant, the New York Post wrote that she “demonstrates an ability far above that of the reigning stars.”

The small screen seemed most suited for her, and her career took off in the early 1950s, with appearances on “Robert Montgomery Presents” and “Studio One.”

“Father Knows Best” had first been a radio program with the more amusing title “Father Knows Best?” Robert Young was already the star, but on radio, “He was cast as much more of a bumbler,” Wyatt told the Toronto Star. Wyatt said that she was initially reluctant to take the role. “I’d been doing a lot of live TV drama in which I was the star. I didn’t want to be just a mother,” she said.

Wyatt shot 39 episodes annually on a set that was a fully functional house, though the second story was false. Unusually, appeared at different times on each of the three networks.

“In those years I was with Bob [Young] more than my real husband. I remember going over to the Young’s house for a dinner party and when I walked in I fixed Bob’s tie without even thinking about it,” Wyatt said.

Young decided to retire “Father Knows Best” in 1960, after two of the Anderson’s three children left home, a daughter for college and a son for the draft. That left just one daughter (“the weakest actor of the three,” Wyatt said), and Young felt the show had run out of story lines.

Wyatt refused to take another series part, though she did take occasional guest-starring roles, including as Amanda, Dr. Spock’s mother, in a 1967 episode of “Star Trek.” (“Always a mother,” she kvetched.)

In later years, she safaried in Africa and supported projects to beautify Los Angeles. She said she got a kick out of being confused with Jane Wyman. “She’s a marvelous actress and I’m flattered to be called that — sometimes I get the best tables at restaurants because of it,” she said.

Jane Wyatt

Born August 12, 1910, at Campgaw, N.J.; died October 20 in Los Angeles; survived by her sons, Christopher Ward and Nicholas Ward, and three grandchildren. Her husband of 65 years, Edgar Bethune Ward, died in 2000.