Carroll Baker

At 93 years old, Carroll Baker has this physical status:

Career

Baker appeared in television commercials for Winston cigarettes and Coca Cola, and he was featured in an episode of Monodrama Theater, which was broadcast on the DuMont Network in 1952. She made her film debut in the film From A Small Walk-on (1953). She appeared in two Broadway productions: Roger MacDougall's Escapade in the fall of 1953, and Robert Anderson's All Summer Long, opposite Ed Begley, which ran from September to mid-November 1954. She screen tested and auditioned for the leading role in Picnic in 1955, but Kim Novak lost the role. Since James Dean recommended her for the role in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), she turned down.

In his last film role, Baker was playing Luz Benedict II, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. Baker had been offered numerous leading roles in feature films up to this point, but she decided to debut in a supporting role in Giant because she was "insecure" and "wanted to start out a little less 'profile.' In 1955, Giant was largely shot in Marfa, Texas; Baker related her experience on set, saying that James Dean and her crew were both enamored of Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor while filming.

Baker was initially intended for Marilyn Monroe, but later in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) he was cast as the title character. After seeing Baker perform a scene from his script at the Actors Studio the year before, Tennessee Williams, who had written and produced the screenplay based on two of his one-act plays, wanted her to play the role; similarly, Kazan was impressed by her appearance in All Summer Long on Broadway the year before. Arrêting in Benoit, Mississippi, directly after Baker finished Giant, her role in the film as a sexually repressed teenage bride to a struggling middle-aged cotton gin owner gave Baker overnight success and a degree of notoriety well before the film's release. Artist Robert Everheart, under Warner Bros.' sponsorship, created a 135-foot (41 m) billboard in Times Square supporting the film, depicting the now-iconic photograph of a scantily dressed Baker lying in a crib sucking her thumb. The film's turbulent advertising campaign earned a pre-emptive backlash from religious organisations, and on December 16, 1956, Cardinal Francis Spellman of St. Patrick's Cathedral condemned the film and warned his parish not to watch it. The Roman Catholic National Legion of Decency issued a formal condemnation, saying it was "grievously offended to Christian and traditional morality and decency."

Marilyn Monroe appeared at the premiere of Baker as an usherette to help raise ticket sales, the proceeds of which were donated to the Actors Studio. Baker has been lauded for her performance. Variety said that her appearance "captures all the animal charm, the naivete, misogyny, ridicule, and burgeoning fascination with Baby Doll," while Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised Baker's ability to display "a piteously flimsy little bit of juvenile obsession, envy, physical yearnings, common crudities, and conceits." Baby Doll developed Baker as an A-list actress and it will remain the film for which she is best known. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Golden Globe for Best Actress, and she shared the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer with Jayne Mansfield and Natalie Wood. The appearance earned her a Film Achievement Award from Look, as well as the title "Woman of the Year" from Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club in 1957. In June 1956, she appeared on the Life Magazine front page.

Baker continued to appear in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Too Much, Too Soon (1958), and The Devil's Disciple (1959). She refused to make Too Much Too Soon, so Warner Bros. placed her on suspension, preventing her from appearing in MGM's The Brothers Karamazov (1958). Baker was also chosen by MGM for the lead in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and by Twentieth Century Fox for The Three Faces of Eve (1957), but Warner Bros. declined her from attending the performances. Baker and the studio's tensions erupted when she went against their wishes by appearing in Arms and the Man on stage. Baker wrote about the effects of the software on her career, saying: "I joined at the end of the big studio system." "I still had a slave job, and they were able to force you to do almost everything they could."

Baker appeared in William Wyler's Western epic The Big Country (1958). Critics loved the film, but critics were able to report the first one as "problematic": Baker was four months pregnant at the time and had to wear restraining clothes, and director Wyler said she was on the brink of tears after requiring her to repeat the same routine over 60 times. In The Miracle (1959), co-starring Roger Moore, and But Not for Me (1959), a comedy with Clark Gable, she followed The Big Country in lead roles in two romances, portraying a nun. "Miss Baker, being a young lady who not only has looks but also acts, helps to understand why Mr. Gable would like to cheat a little bit on Father Time," the New York Times praised Baker's appearance in But Not for Me. She looved The Miracle so much that she ended her deal with Warner Bros., putting her in a lot of debt. At At But not for Me was made at Paraphrasedoutput.

Baker went on to make Something Wild (1961), directed by her then-husband Jack Garfein. She plays a young college student from the Bronx who is arrested one night in St. James Park and then incarcerated by a Manhattan mechanic (Ralph Meeker), who witnessed her subsequent suicide attempt. Baker lived alone in a boarding house in Lower East Side of New York and began working as a department-store salesgirl, as her method of the job was described in Life magazine in 1960. The film's critical reaction was largely critical, though Film Quarter praised it as "the most interesting American film of its quarter" and the most underrated film of 1961, despite this. However, its tumultuous portrayal of rape sparked a lot of criticism and public condemnation, and historians have praised Baker's career for nearly halting his career. In the same year, she portrayed Gwen Harold in Bridge to the Sun (1961), a MGM production based on the 1957 best-selling autobiography of a Tennessee-born woman who married a Japanese diplomat (portrayed by James Shigeta) and became one of the few Americans to live in Japan during World War II. Despite only a modest success at the box office, critics loved the film, and the entry of the United States in the Venice International Film Festival was well-reced by critics, and it was America's first film festival entry.

Baker appeared in independent British-German film Station Six-Sahara (1962) as a woman who sparked controversy at an oil station in the Sahara Desert, as well as the blockbuster Western epic How the West Was Won (1962), starring James Stewart and Debbie Reynolds, as well as former co-stars Gregory Peck and Karl Malden. Baker took time off Broadway to appear in the 1962 version of Garson Kanin's Come on Strong, which was directed in the fall of that year. Baker and her two children and their two children migrated to Los Angeles for the next two years, where she based herself for the next decade. She and co-star Robert Mitchum were filming in Kenya (1965), where rumors of her and co-star Robert Mitchum were having an affair were denied by the public. Another tale, now considered apocryphal, is that a Maasai chief in Kenya sold 150 cows, 200 goats, sheep, and $750 for her hand in marriage. On the front page of Life's July 1964 issue, she appeared with Maasai warriors.

In John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Baker portrayed a pacifist Quaker schoolteacher, who received acclaim for his part. In The Carpetbaggers (1964), she appeared as Saint Veronica in George Stevens' "The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), bringing her a second wave of notoriety in the midst of poor reviews. Baker's role as the sex-loaded widow" was described by the New York Times as "a sickly sour distillation" of the source novel, but the film "brought some light and a sandpaper personality." The film was the highest moneymaker of the year, with domestic box-office receipts of $13,000,000, and it started a tumultuous relationship with Joseph E. Levine, the film's producer.

Levine began to develop Baker as a movie sex symbol, based on her appearance in the December 1964 issue of Playboy. She appeared in two 1965 potboilers — Sylvia as an ex-protester and con artist — and Harlow as Jean Harlow. Baker appeared on the front page of the Saturday Evening Post on November 2, 1963, as Harlow, a film promotion. She became Foster Grant sunglasses' official celebrity spokesperson in 1965 and appeared in company ads. Baker likened this period of her career to "being a beauty contest champion [as opposed to] an actor."

Harlow's reception from critics was tempered: Variety described Baker's portrayal of Harlow as "a pretty good facsimile," but she did not have access to the original's electric fire. Baker and Levine's ties soured; in a 1965 interview, Baker sardonically said: "I'll say this about Joe Levine: I admire his taste in leading ladies"; the media was led to a rift between the actor and producer. Baker sued Levine in 1966 over her Paraphrasedoutput, but she was eventually dismissed by During the tense court fight, Baker was later found out of thousands of dollars in debt; still, she was later awarded $1 million in compensation.

Baker admitted that she felt pressure in both her professional relationship with Levine and her intimate life with her husband, whom she claimed wanted to maintain a luxurious lifestyle in an interview with Reed. (1974) Baker revealed that she felt pressure in both her work with Levine and her personal life with her husband, who she said she regretted having an expensive lifestyle. "I was under contract with Joe Levine, who was going around giving me diamonds and behaving like he owned me." I never slept with him or anything, but most believed I was his mistress." Baker returned to theatre in the spring of 1966, appearing in a production of Anna Christie at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles. Garfein directed the film. In Los Angeles, the performance was heralded as the "theatre event of the week," although the reception was middling. The Los Angeles Times' Cecil Smith referred to the performance: "The stunning Miss Baker's car becomes a hearse." In June 1966, the performance was also presented at the Tappan Zee Playhouse in Nyack, New York.

After struggling to find jobs in Hollywood, Baker divorced Jack Garfein in 1967 and moved to Europe with her two children to pursue a career. Baker, who settled in Rome, became fluent in Italian and spent the next several years in hard-edged Italian thrillers, exploitation, and horror films. Baker appeared at the Venice International Film Festival in 1966, where she met director Marco Ferreri, who had invited her to play the lead role in Her Harem (1967). This was followed by horror films The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968) and The Devil Has Seven Faces (1971). Baker appeared in So Sweet... So Perverse (1969), Orgasmo (1969), A Quiet Place to Kill (1970), and Il coltello di ghiaccio (1972), two giallo films directed by Italian filmmaker Umberto Lenzi.

Many of these films feature her as abused women, and they often featured Baker in nude scenes, something that few leading Hollywood actresses were able to do at the time. Baker, who played a wealthy widow befuddled by two sadistic siblings, became a favorite of Umberto Lenzi. Roger Ebert wrote about Paranoia: "Carroll Baker, who was a Hollywood sex symbol (for some), has been around," Roger Ebert wrote about Paranoia until she sued Joe Levine and was blacklisted, and was unveiled." She may not be an actress, but she will perform. There was a certain wholesome vulgarity to her appearance in The Carpetbaggers. She isn't inherently bad as she appears in Paranoia. I suspect she was saying 'the hell with it' and having a good time.' As with Paranoia, the bulk of her films in Italy received poor critical reception in the United States, but they gave Baker—who had left Hollywood in debt and with two children to care — an income as well as international recognition. Baker reflected on her time in Italy and in her role as a producer on exploitation film, saying, "I think I made more films [there] than I did in Hollywood," she said. What they think is amazing isn't what we should do — it brought me right back to life and gave me a whole new perspective. It's amazing to learn about a different world."

She followed her participation in Lenzi's films as the titular witch of Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga (1973) as the titular witch, alongside Isabelle De Funès and George Eastman. The film was described by the TV Guide as a "extraordinary example of 1970s Italian pop-exploitation filmmaking enhanced by Piero Umilani's lounge-jazz score," and she praised Baker's work but noted that she was "physically wrong for the role; her elaborate lace-and-beribboned costumes made her appear more like a fleshy Miss Havisham than a sleekly predatory sorceress."

"It's more like going to the moon!

She continued Bad with a role in Dennis Hopper's low-budget thriller The Sky Is Falling (1979), playing a washed-up actress in a Spanish village among expatriates. The 1970s saw Baker, where she appeared in British theater productions of Bell, Book, and Candle; Rain, an adapted of a tale by W. Somerset Maugham; and Motive. Baker met stage actor Donald Burton, who became her third husband, while touring England and Ireland in productions of Motive in 1978. She appeared in Georges Feydeau's 13 Rue de l'Amour, Forty Carats, and Goodbye Charlie on American television.

Baker was primarily a character actor by the 1980s and was based in London. After being approached by British director John Hough, a longtime admirer of her work, she appeared in a supporting role in the 1980 Walt Disney-produced horror film The Watcher in the Woods, alongside Bette Davis. She appeared in the British television film Red Monarch (1983) as the mother of murdered Playboy model Dorothy Stratten (played by Mariel Hemingway) in the biographical Star 80 (1983). In the comedy The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud (1984), she appeared as the mother of Sigmund Freud, as well as Carol Kane and Klaus Kinski.

Baker appeared in Hitler's Portrait in Evil (1985), a coming-of-age romance set against Nazi Germany, as well as in the 1986 film Native Son (1986), which featured Matt Dillon, Geraldine Page, and a young Oprah Winfrey. In the latter, Baker, the mother of a teenage girl who was mistakenly killed by an African American chauffeur who is still trying to cover up the tragedy. Roger Ebert lauded Baker's role, noting her "strong" scene with Winfrey in the film's finale.

Baker played a leading role in Ironweed (1987), alongside Meryl Streep. Carroll Baker's homecoming [in the film] is all the more effective because she is so good as his wife," she says. It's surprising to say that Baker owns the film against Jack Nicholson, but she does."

Baker starred Eleanor Crisp—described by Roger Ebert as "an excellent bitch on wheels" in Ivan Reitman's comedy Kindergarten Cop, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Astoria, Oregon, in 1990. The film was a huge financial success, grossing over $200 million worldwide. Her film and television appearances continued into the 1990s, with her appearances in several made-for-television films, including the true-crime tale Judgment Day (1993), Witness Run (1996), and Dalva (1996) with Farrah Fawcett.

Baker appeared in David Fincher's thriller The Game, in which she plays a housekeeper to a billionaire San Francisco banker (played by Michael Douglas) who becomes embroiled in a sadistic game portrayed by Sean Penn. Baker spoke to The New York Post after the film's release, saying, "It's a big movie and I'm honored to be involved in it." Of course, I want to be the romantic lead, and I'm actually younger than Michael [Douglas] age than Deborah Kara Unger is, but] I suspect it's always been that way in Hollywood. "I was in my twenties, worked with Jimmy Stewart, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable, all of whom were old enough to be my father." The Game turned out to be a big hit in Baker's later films, with the game gaining brisk critical acclaim and broad critical acclaim.

Baker appeared in small, independent films such as Just Your Luck (1996) and Nowhere to Go (1997), in addition to her appearances in big-budget films. Baker appeared on television series more often than in the 1990s, including episodes of Grand (1990), Tales from the Crypt (1991), opposite Teri Garr in a segment produced by Michael J. (both 1993) and Roswell (1999). She appeared in the Lifetime film Another Woman's Husband in 2000. Baker appeared in the documentary Cinerama Adventure in 2002 and appeared in an episode of The Lyon's Den, portraying Rob Lowe's mother. Baker's last film appearance before she officially resigned from acting in 2003. She starred in film, television, and theater for more than 50 years.

She has, on the other hand, participated in retrospective documentaries, including an interview with Baby Doll, which also includes a documentary starring Baker, who discusses the film's influence on her career. Baker has appeared in documentaries about several of her co-stars, including Clark Gable, Roger Moore, Sal Mineo, and James Dean, as well as the 1985 BBC Radio 2 tribute commemorating the actor's death. On BBC Radio 2 in 1982, her memories of James Dean's death in a car accident in 1955 were revived. Adam Faith, a singer, and screenwriter Ray Connolly were also on the program.

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