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Anne Baxter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Annie Baxter. For the fictional soap opera character, see Anne Baxter (Neighbours).

Anne Baxter
Baxter in You're My Everything (1949)
Born(1923-05-07)May 7, 1923
Michigan City, Indiana, U.S.
DiedDecember 12, 1985(1985-12-12) (aged 62)
New York City, U.S.
Resting placeLloyd Jones Cemetery, Spring Green, Wisconsin
EducationBrearley School
OccupationActress
Years active1936–1985
Known forThe Razor's Edge
All About Eve
The Ten Commandments
Batman
Political partyRepublican
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1946; div. 1953)​
Randolph Galt
​
​
(m. 1960; div. 1969)​
David Klee
​
​
(m. 1977; died 1977)​
Children3
RelativesFrank Lloyd Wright (grandfather)
Lloyd Wright (uncle)
John Lloyd Wright (uncle)
Eric Lloyd Wright (cousin)
Elizabeth Wright Ingraham (cousin)
AwardsAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress (1946)
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress (1947)

Anne Baxter (May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985) was an American actress, star of Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television series. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Emmy.

A granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, Baxter studied acting with Maria Ouspenskaya and had some stage experience before making her film debut in 20 Mule Team (1940). She became a contract player of 20th Century Fox and was loaned to RKO Pictures for the role of Lucy Morgan in Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), one of her earlier films. In 1947, she won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946). In 1951, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the title role in All About Eve (1950). She worked with several of Hollywood's greatest directors, including Billy Wilder in Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Alfred Hitchcock in I Confess (1953), Fritz Lang in The Blue Gardenia (1953), and Cecil B. DeMille in The Ten Commandments (1956), for which she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Female Dramatic Performance.

Early life

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Baxter was born May 7, 1923, in Michigan City, Indiana, to Catherine Dorothy Baxter (née Wright; 1894–1979), whose father was the architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright, and Kenneth Stuart Baxter (1893–1977), an executive with the Seagram Company.

When Baxter was five, she appeared in a school play. When she was six, her family moved to New York, where she continued to act. She was raised in Westchester County, New York[1] and attended Brearley.[2]

At age 10, Baxter attended a Broadway play starring Helen Hayes where she was so impressed she declared to her family she wanted to become an actress. By age 13, she had appeared on Broadway in Seen but Not Heard. During this period, Baxter learned her acting craft as a student of actress and teacher Maria Ouspenskaya.

In 1939, she was cast as Katharine Hepburn's younger sister in the play The Philadelphia Story, although Hepburn did not like Baxter's acting style, and Baxter was replaced during the show's pre-Broadway run. Rather than giving up, she turned to Hollywood.[3]

Career

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20th Century Fox

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Joseph Cotten, Baxter and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

At 16, Baxter screen-tested for the role of Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca. Director Alfred Hitchcock deemed Baxter too young for the role, but she soon secured a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. In 1940, she was loaned to MGM for her first film 20 Mule Team, in which she was billed fourth after Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo, and Marjorie Rambeau. She worked with John Barrymore in her next film The Great Profile (1940) and appeared as the ingénue in the Jack Benny vehicle Charley's Aunt (1941). She received star billing in Swamp Water (1941) and The Pied Piper (1942), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Anne Baxter in 1943 with United States Army soldiers

Baxter was loaned to RKO to appear in director Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). She was Tyrone Power's leading lady in Crash Dive (1943), her first Technicolor film. In 1943, she played a French maid in a North African hotel (with a French accent) in Billy Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo, a Paramount production.[4] She became a popular star in World War II dramas and received top billing in The North Star (1943), The Sullivans (1944), The Eve of St. Mark (1944), and Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944), co-starring her future husband John Hodiak. Baxter later recalled, "I was getting almost as much mail as Betty Grable. I was our boys' idealized girl next door."[5]

She was loaned to United Artists for the leading role in the film noir Guest in the House (1944), and appeared in A Royal Scandal (1945), with Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Coburn; Smoky (1946), with Fred MacMurray; Angel on My Shoulder (1946), with Paul Muni and Claude Rains.

Baxter co-starred with Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney in 1946's The Razor's Edge, for which she won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Baxter later recounted that The Razor's Edge contained her only great performance, a hospital scene where the character Sophie "loses her husband, child and everything else." She said she relived the death of her brother, who had died at age three.[6]

Baxter as Nefertari in The Ten Commandments (1956), for which she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Female Dramatic Performance[7]
Baxter as Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress

She was loaned to Paramount for a top-billed role opposite William Holden in Blaze of Noon (1947) and to MGM for a supporting role as Clark Gable's wife in Homecoming (1948). Back at 20th Century Fox, she played a wide variety of roles: a lawyer in love with Cornel Wilde in The Walls of Jericho (1948); Tyrone Power's Irish romantic interest in The Luck of the Irish (1948); a tomboy in Yellow Sky (1948), with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark; a 1920s flapper in You're My Everything (1949), with Dan Dailey; and another tomboy in A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950), again with Dailey.

In 1950, Baxter was chosen to co-star in All About Eve largely because of a resemblance to Claudette Colbert, who originally was cast but dropped out and was replaced by Bette Davis. The original idea was to have Baxter's character gradually come to mirror Colbert's over the course of the film. Baxter received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the title role of Eve Harrington. She said she modeled the role on a bitchy understudy she had for her debut performance in the Broadway play Seen but Not Heard at the age of 13 and who had threatened to "finish her off."[6]

Her next Fox film Follow the Sun (1951) co-starred Glenn Ford as champion golfer Ben Hogan; Baxter played Hogan's wife Valerie. She was top-billed in the western The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1950), with Dale Robertson, and was part of an ensemble cast in O. Henry's Full House (1952), her last project for Fox.[5] The comedy My Wife's Best Friend, with MacDonald Carey, was her second and last Fox film released in 1952. Baxter left 20th Century Fox in 1953.[8]

Freelance

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In 1953, Baxter contracted a two-picture deal for Warner Brothers. Her first was opposite Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess; the second was the Fritz Lang whodunit The Blue Gardenia, in which she played a woman accused of murder.[6]

In June 1954, Baxter won the part of the Egyptian princess and queen Nefertari in Cecil B. DeMille's award-winning The Ten Commandments.[9] Her scenes were shot on Paramount's sound stages in 1955, and she attended the film's New York and Los Angeles premieres in November 1956. Despite criticisms of her interpretation of Nefertari, DeMille and The Hollywood Reporter both thought her performance was "very good",[10][11] and The New York Daily News described her as "remarkably effective".[12] For her work in The Ten Commandments, she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Female Dramatic Performance.[7] She later remembered the film in an interview:

DeMille asked me to come in. His office at Paramount was bursting with books, props, rolls of linens. I told him I'd have to wear an Egyptian false nose and he pounded the table. "No. Baxter, your Irish nose stays in this picture." He acted out my part and I kept nodding, and I walked out with the part. The sound stage sets were magnificent. It was all corny, sure, but DeMille knew it was corny—that's what he wanted, what he loved. I loved slinking around—really, this was silent film acting but with dialogue.[5]

In 1960, Baxter received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6741 Hollywood Boulevard.[13]

Later career

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Baxter worked regularly in television in the 1960s. She appeared as one of the mystery guests on What's My Line? She also starred as guest villain Zelda The Great in episodes 9 and 10 of the Batman series. She appeared as another villain, Olga, Queen of the Cossacks, opposite Vincent Price's Egghead in three episodes of the show's third season. She played an old flame of Raymond Burr on his crime series Ironside. Baxter made a guest appearance on My Three Sons season 8 episode 10, aired on November 4, 1967, called "Designing Woman", portraying a glamorous female engineer who wanted Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray) as a love interest and possible future husband.[citation needed]

Baxter returned to Broadway during the 1970s in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve, but this time as Margo Channing (succeeding Lauren Bacall).[citation needed]

In the 1970s, Baxter was a frequent guest and guest host on The Mike Douglas Show. She portrayed a murderous film star on an episode of Columbo, titled "Requiem for a Falling Star". In 1971, she had a role in Fools' Parade as an aging prostitute. In 1983, Baxter starred in the television series Hotel, replacing her All About Eve costar Bette Davis after the latter became ill.[citation needed]

Personal life

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Baxter at the New York premiere of The Ten Commandments (1956)

Baxter married actor John Hodiak on July 7, 1946,[14] at her parents' home in Burlingame, California.[15] The couple had one daughter, Katrina, born in 1951. They divorced in 1953. At the time, she said they were "basically incompatible",[16] but in her book she blamed herself for the separation: "I had loved John as much", she wrote. "But we'd eventually congealed in the longest winter in the world. Daily estrangement. Things unsaid. Even a fight would have warmed us. To my shame, I'd picked one at last in order to unfreeze the word 'divorce'."[17]

In the mid-1950s, Baxter began a relationship with Gambino gangster Filippo Autelitano and later, her publicist Russell Birdwell, who took control of her career and directed her in The Come On (1956).[5] The couple formed Baxter-Birdwell Productions to make films on a 10-year plan; Baxter would star in the films and Birdwell would work behind the camera.[18] Princeton University Library has a collection of 175 letters by Baxter to Birdwell.[19]

In 1960, Baxter married a second time to Randolph Galt, an American owner of a cattle station at Gloucester near Sydney where she was filming Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. After the birth of their second daughter, Maginel, back in California, Galt unexpectedly announced that they were moving to a 4,452 hectares (11,000 acres) ranch south of Grants, New Mexico.[20] They then moved to Hawaii (his home state) before settling back in Brentwood, California.[21] Baxter and Galt were divorced in 1969. In 1976, Baxter recounted her courtship with Galt (whom she called "Ran") in a well-received book called Intermission. Melissa Galt, Baxter's first daughter with Galt, became an interior designer and then a business coach, speaker, and seminar provider.[22] Maginel became a cloistered Catholic nun, reportedly living in Rome.[23][24] After 11 years in Italy and 20 years living monastic life, Maginel left religion altogether.[25]

In 1977, Baxter married David Klee, a stockbroker. It was a brief marriage; Klee died unexpectedly from illness. The newlywed couple had purchased a sprawling property in Easton, Connecticut, which they extensively remodeled; however, Klee did not live to see the renovations completed. Although she maintained a residence in West Hollywood, Baxter considered her Connecticut home to be her primary residence.

Baxter was a Republican who was active in the campaigns of Thomas E. Dewey[26] and Dwight D. Eisenhower.[27]

Death

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Baxter had a stroke on December 4, 1985, while hailing a taxi on Madison Avenue in New York City.[28] She remained on life support for eight days in New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, until family members agreed that brain function had ceased, and she died on December 12, at the age of 62.[29][1][30]

Awards and nominations

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Year Award Category Work Result
1947 Golden Globe Award Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture The Razor's Edge Won
1947 Academy Award Best Supporting Actress Won
1951 Best Actress All About Eve Nominated
1957 Laurel Award Topliner Female Dramatic Performance The Ten Commandments Won[7]
1969 Primetime Emmy Award Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role The Name of the Game ("The Bobby Currier Story") Nominated

Filmography

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Main article: Anne Baxter on screen and stage

Radio appearances

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Year Program Episode/source
1945 Old Gold Comedy Theatre Nothing but the Truth[31]
1948 Lux Radio Theatre The Luck of the Irish[32]
1952 Suspense (radio drama) The Death of Barbara Allen
1953 Theatre Guild on the Air Trial by Forgery[33]
1953 The Martin and Lewis Show Episode #100 (May 5)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Anne Baxter Dies at 62, 8 Days After Her Stroke". Los Angeles Times. Times Wire Service. December 12, 1985. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
  2. ^ Stratton, Jean (March 27, 2007). "Long-time Princeton Resident Herbert W. Hobler Has Been in the Action and Shaped Events". Town Topics.
  3. ^ Smith, David Lee (2006). Hoosiers in Hollywood. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press. pp. 177–178. ISBN 978-0-8719-5194-6. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  4. ^ Five Graves to Cairo at IMDb
  5. ^ a b c d Bawden, James; Miller, Ron (April 1, 2016). Conversations with Classic Film Stars: Interviews from Hollywood's Golden Era. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 143–149. ISBN 978-0-8131-6712-1.
  6. ^ a b c Ingram, Frances. "Anne Baxter: An Actress, Not a Personality". classicimages.com. Archived from the original on May 25, 2012. Retrieved October 10, 2010.
  7. ^ a b c "1956-1957 Laurel Award Winners". Motion Picture Exhibitor. 58 (18): SS-42. August 28, 1957. Retrieved September 29, 2021.
  8. ^ Endres, Stacey; Cushman, Robert (1992). Hollywood at Your Feet: The Story of the World-Famous Chinese Theater. Pomegranate Press. pp. 215–216. ISBN 978-0-9388-1708-6.
  9. ^ "'Commandments' Role For Anne Baxter". Variety. June 7, 1954.
  10. ^ DeMille, Cecil Blount (1959). The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. Prentice-Hall. p. 416.
  11. ^ "The Ten Commandments: Read THR's 1956 Review". The Hollywood Reporter. December 7, 2014. Retrieved December 27, 2016.
  12. ^ "Flashback: Original 1956 review of The Ten Commandments in the Daily News". New York Daily News. Retrieved December 27, 2016.
  13. ^ "Anne Baxter". Hollywood Walk of Fame. Retrieved November 15, 2017.
  14. ^ "Wedding of Film Stars". The Central Queensland Herald. Rockhampton. July 11, 1946. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  15. ^ "John Hodiak and Anne Baxter Marry". The Argus. Melbourne. Australian Associated Press. July 9, 1946. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  16. ^ "Actor Hodiak Slept When Visitors Came". Illawarra Daily Mercury. January 29, 1953. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  17. ^ Baxter, Anne (1976). Intermission: A True Story. G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 23. ISBN 0-345-25773-1.
  18. ^ Mosby, Aline (December 14, 1954). "Ann Baxter [sic] Emerges As Glamour Actress". Madera Tribune. United Press. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  19. ^ "Anne Baxter Letters to Russell Birdwell". Princeton University Library. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
  20. ^ Baxter 1976, pp. 378–379.
  21. ^ Nutman, Philip (September 3, 2001). "Galt's heritage and history led to design career". Atlanta Business Chronicle. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
  22. ^ "Meet Melissa". Melissa Galt. Retrieved April 8, 2022.
  23. ^ "An Ann Baxter Accolade". Archived from the original on January 24, 2010. Retrieved October 14, 2009.
  24. ^ Weller, Peter (March 28, 2007). "That Toddling Town! CHICAGO!". Cigar Aficionado. Retrieved June 4, 2012.
  25. ^ "Maginel Galt". The Oracle Institute. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  26. ^ Thomas, Bob (October 24, 1948). "Hollywood Is Pitching Into Political Race". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  27. ^ "Republicans in Hollywood Set Stage for Ike". The Owosso Argus-Press. Associated Press. October 9, 1952. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  28. ^ "Anne Baxter Hospitalized". The New York Times. December 5, 1985.
  29. ^ Reid, Alexander (December 13, 1985). "Anne Baxter is Dead at 62; Actress Won Oscar in 1946". The New York Times. p. 1.
  30. ^ "Anne Baxter Succumbs at 62". The Victoria Advocate. Associated Press. December 13, 1985.[permanent dead link]
  31. ^ "Radio's Golden Age". Nostalgia Digest. 40 (1): 40–41. Winter 2014.
  32. ^ "Those Were the Days". Nostalgia Digest. 39 (1): 32–41. Winter 2013.
  33. ^ Kirby, Walter (January 18, 1953). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 40. Retrieved June 20, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
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