Janis Wilson
American actress
Janis Mae Wilson (February 9, 1930 – November 17, 2003) was an American child actress of the 1940s. She is probably best known for her roles in Now, Voyager and Watch on the Rhine opposite Bette Davis as well as for the films The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and Snafu.
Career
Born in Santa Barbara, California, twelve-year-old Wilson's mother had her dentist put bands on her teeth in order for her to win her first role as Tina Durrance, a little girl rejected and unloved by her mother, in the 1942 Bette Davis drama Now, Voyager. Warner Bros. considered Wilson a “sensational discovery” and due to her fondness for the young actress, Davis persuaded the studio to cast her as her daughter in her next film Watch on the Rhine. Wilson starred in just five more films before retiring at age 18 after appearing in the 1948 horror film The Creeper.
Personal life
Wilson initially met her future husband Sidney Victor Petertyl on the Warner Bros. lot in 1942 when she was just twelve years old and filming Now, Voyager. They were married in Santa Barbara in 1955 when Wilson was 25. The Petertyls had one son and eventually settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan where they lived for 31 years.
The public source identifies “Janis Wilson” as american actress. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Janis, Wilson and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105620407. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2003, 1942 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Janis Wilson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.