Anne Baxter

At 62 years old, Anne Baxter has this physical status:

Anne Baxter (May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985) was an American actress, singer of Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television series.

She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, as well as being nominated for an Emmy. Frank Lloyd Wright's granddaughter, Baxter, studied acting with Maria Ouspenskaya and had some stage experience before deciding on her first film debut in 20 Mule (1940).

She became a part of twentieth Century Fox and was loaned to RKO Pictures for a role in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), one of her earlier films.

In 1947, she received the Academy 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 her role in All About Eve (1950).

She worked with many of Hollywood's top writers, including Alfred Hitchcock in I Confess (1953), Fritz Lang in The Blue Gardenia (1953), and Cecil B. DeMille in The Ten Commandments (1956).

Early life

Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, to Catherine Dorothy (née Wright; 1894–1979), an executive with the Seagram Company, and Kenneth Stuart Baxter (1893–1977). When Baxter was five years old, she appeared in a school play. When she was six years old, her family moved to New York, where she continued to perform. She was born in Westchester County, New York, and attended Brearley.

Helen Hayes' role as a ten-year-old teen actress, who was so impressed that she told her family that she wanted to be a performer. She had appeared on Broadway in Seen by age 13, but not Heard. Baxter learned her acting craft as a student of actress and tutor Maria Ouspenskaya during this time.

In 1939, she was cast as Katharine Hepburn's younger sister in the play The Philadelphia Story, but Hepburn did not like Baxter's acting style, and Baxter was dismissed during the show's pre-Broadway run. She went to Hollywood rather than giving up.

Personal life

John Hodiak, a Baxter child actor, married in Burlingame, California, on July 7, 1946. Katrina, the couple's one daughter, was born in 1951. In 1953, the two families divorced. At the time, she said they were "incompatible," but she blamed herself for the split: "I had loved John as much." "But we did get to the longest winter in the world." It's been a daily annoyance. Things are uncertain. Even a war would have sparked us. I'd chosen one at last in order to unfreeze the term 'divorce,'" to my regret.

Baxter began a friendship with Gambino gangster Filippo Autelitano in the mid-1950s and then with her publicist Russell Birdwell, who took over her work and directed her in The Come On (1956). The pair founded Baxter-Birdwell Productions in order to produce films on a 10-year basis; Baxter will appear in the films and Birdwell will work behind the camera. Baxter to Birdwell's 175 letters are stored in Princeton University Library's collection.

Randolph Galt, the American owner of a cattle station near Gloucester, married Baxter in 1960, where she was filming the Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Galt unexpectedly announced that they were moving to a 4,452 acre (11,000 acre) ranch south of Grants, New Mexico, following the birth of their second daughter, Maginel, back in California. They then returned to Hawaii (his home state) before settling in Brentwood, California, and renamed him. In 1969, Baxter and Galt were divorced. In a well-received book called Intermission, Baxter reminisces about her courtship with Galt (whom she referred to as "Ran" in 1976. Melissa Galt, Baxter's first child, joined Galt, became an interior designer, then a business coach, speaker, and seminar facilitator. Maginel is said to have lived in Rome, and he became a cloistered Catholic nun.

Baxter married David Klee, a stockbroker, in 1977. Klee died suddenly from illness after a brief marriage. The newlywed couple had bought a sprawling house in Easton, Connecticut, that they had extensively renovated; however, Klee did not live to see the renovations complete. Baxter, who owned a West Hollywood home, considered Connecticut her primary residence.

Baxter, a Republican, was active in Thomas E. Dewey and Dwight D. Eisenhower's campaigns.

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Career

Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca was screen-tested for the role at 16 years old by Baxter. Baxter was deemed too young for the position, according to director Alfred Hitchcock, but she soon signed a seven-year deal with twentieth 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. In her next film The Great Profile (1940), she appeared as the ingénue in Charley's Aunt (1941). In Swamp Water (1941) and The Pied Piper (1942), she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

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

She was loaned to United Artists for the leading role in the film noir (1944), with Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Coburn; Smoky (1946), with Fred MacMurray and Jean Muni and Claude Rains.

In 1946's The Razor's Edge, Baxter co-starred with Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, for which she received both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Later, Baxter said that The Razor's Edge contained her only good role, a hospital scene in which Sophie "loses her husband, child, and everything else." She recalled her brother's death, who died at the age of three, and said she relived the event.

In Blaze of Noon (1947), she was loaned to Paramount for a top-billed role opposite William Holden, and MGM for a supporting role as Clark Gable's wife in Homecoming (1948). Helen Peck and Richard Widmark's Irish romantic interest in The Luck of the Irish (1948), a 1950s flapper with Dan Dailey; and another tomboy in A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950) with Dailey.

Baxter was chosen to co-star in All About Eve in 1950 largely because of a resemblance to Claudette Colbert, who was initially cast but later was replaced by Bette Davis. The initial intention was to have Baxter's character gradually correspond to Colbert's throughout the film. Eve Harrington's role as the title character received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She based the role on a bitchy understudie who appeared in the Broadway play Seen but Not Heard at the age of 13 and who had threatened to "finish her off."

Glenn Ford co-starred in her forthcoming Fox film Follow the Sun (1951) as the champion golfer Ben Hogan; Baxter played Hogan's wife Valerie. She appeared in 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 venture for Fox. MacDonald Carey's comedy My Wife's Best Friend was her second and last Fox film to be released in 1952. In 1953, Baxter became the 20th Century Fox.

Baxter signed a two-picture contract with Warner Brothers in 1953. In Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, she was opposite Montgomery Clift; the second was the Fritz Lang whodunit The Blue Gardenia, in which she played a woman accused of murder.

Baxter received the role of Egyptian princess and king Nefertari in Cecil B. DeMille's award-winning The Ten Commandments in June 1954. She appeared on In 1955, she appeared on Paraphrasedoutput, and she appeared at the film's premieres in New York and Los Angeles. Despite rumors regarding her interpretation of Nefertari, DeMille, and The Hollywood Reporter, her role as "very good" was described as "remarkably effective," according to The New York Daily News. She received a Laurel Award for Bestliner Female Dramatic Performance for her role in The Ten Commandments. In an interview, she remembered the film: she later remembered it:

Baxter was a motion pictures film star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 on Hollywood Boulevard at 6741 Hollywood Boulevard.

In the 1960s, Baxter appeared on television regularly. She appeared on What's My Line as one of the mystery guests. In episodes 9 and ten of the Batman movie series, she appeared as guest villain Zelda The Great. In three episodes of the show's third season, she appeared as another villain, Olga, Queen of the Cossacks, opposite Vincent Price's Egghead. She appeared on Raymond Burr's crime drama Ironside as an old flame. On My Three Sons season 8 episode 10, portrayed a glamorous female engineer who wanted Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray) as a love interest and potential future husband.

During the 1970s, Baxter performed in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve, but this time as Margo Channing (succeeding Lauren Bacall).

On The Mike Douglas Show in the 1970s, Baxter performed as a regular guest and guest host. On an episode of Columbo titled "Requiem for a Falling Star," she played a homicious film actress. She was a participant in Fools' Parade in 1971 as an elderly prostitute. Baxter appeared in the television series Hotel in 1983, notably replacing legendary former film costar Bette Davis (All About Eve) after Davis became ill.

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