Baxter, Anne (1923–1985)

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Baxter, Anne (1923–1985)

American film actress, best known for her work in the title role of All About Eve. Born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923; suffered a stroke in New York City on December 4 and died on December 12, 1985; daughter of Kenneth Stuart andCatherine Wright Baxter (daughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright); attended private schools in New York City; studied acting with Maria Ouspenskaya; married John Hodiak, in 1946 (divorced 1953); married Randolph Galt, in 1960 (divorced 1968); children: (first marriage) Katrina (b. 1951); (second marriage) Melissa (b. 1961), Maginal (b. 1963).

Filmography:

Twenty-Mule Team (1940); The Great Profile (1940); Charley's Aunt (1941); Swamp Water (1941); The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); The Pied Piper (1942); Crash Dive (1943); Five Graves to Cairo (1943); The North Star (Armored Attack, 1943); The Sullivans (1944); The Eve of St. Mark (1944); Guest in the House (1944); Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944); A Royal Scandal (1945); Smoky (1946); Angel on My Shoulder (1946); The Razor's Edge (1946); (off-screen narrator) Mother Wore Tights (1947); Blaze of Noon (1947); Homecoming (1948); The Walls of Jericho (1948); The Luck of the Irish (1948); Yellow Sky (1949); You're My Everything (1949); A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950); All About Eve (1950); Follow the Sun (1951); The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952); My Wife's Best Friend (1952); O. Henry's Full House (1952); I Confess (1952); The Blue Gardenia (1953); Carnival Story (1954); Bedevilled (1955); One Desire (1955); The Spoilers (1956); The Come-on (1956); The Ten Commandments (1956); Three Violent People (1957); Chase a Crooked Shadow (UK, 1958); Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Season of Passion, Australia-UK, 1959); Cimarron (1960); Mix Me a Person (U.K., 1962); Walk on the Wild Side (1962); The Family Jewels (cameo, 1965); Las Siete Magnificas (The Tall Women, Sp.-It.-Aus., 1966); The Busy Body (1967); Fool's Parade (1971); The Late Liz (1971); Little Mo (originally for television) (1978); Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980).

Although Anne Baxter worked with some of Hollywood's finest directors, received one Academy Award, and was nominated for another, she was destined to be known as a skilled, rather than great, actress. But Baxter outlasted many of her contemporaries, performing in film, as well as stage and television, for four decades.

The granddaughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Baxter made an auspicious Broadway debut at age 13 in Seen but Not Heard, which won her praise as a "cute kidlet" and an invitation to study with the famed actress-teacher Maria Ouspenskaya . After a few undistinguished juvenile stage roles, in 1940 Baxter began a seven-year relationship with 20th Century-Fox. For almost a decade, she was often loaned out to other studios or substituted in roles originally planned for someone else.

Baxter reached the high point of her career early, at 23, with her 1946 portrayal of Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Despite the honors, reviews were mixed. Whereas Howard Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune wrote, "The tragic Sophie, drowning her unendurable grief in Paris bistros, is beautifully realized in Anne Baxter's sensitive portrayal," The New York Times' Bosley Crowther felt otherwise. Audiences, however, made up their own minds, and the film was a huge box-office hit. Still, despite the film's popularity and Baxter's Oscar, she was only offered an offstage narration from her home studio in 1947, before being loaned to Paramount for the lackluster Blaze of Noon.

Baxter's second outstanding role—for which she replaced a pregnant Jeanne Crain —was in the 1950 biting show-business satire All About Eve. Baxter played a scheming young actress out to usurp the career and life of actress Margo Channing, portrayed by Bette Davis . Though Baxter captured another Oscar nomination for her performance of Eve, the award went

to Judy Holliday for her comic portrayal in Born Yesterday. Four subsequent films rounded out Baxter's stay at Fox.

Looking for better opportunities, Baxter began freelancing in 1953 with I Confess for Warner Bros. Director Alfred Hitchcock had wanted Anita Bjork for the feminine lead and was outspoken in his displeasure with Baxter, calling her an "awkward substitution." Undaunted, Baxter returned from location in Quebec and immediately recaptured the attention of the Hollywood press by smoking a Havana cigar at a Hollywood restaurant. For the remainder of the '50s, she jumped from studio to studio, and in 1957 attempted a return to the stage in The Square Root of Wonderful, which won lukewarm reviews and closed after 45 performances. In 1958, she made an extensive number of television appearances, including "Playhouse 90," and "TV Theatre." She likened the medium to an entertainment smorgasbord remarking, "it dishes out twice-baked beans with caviar."

Baxter's personal life included a marriage to actor John Hodiak in 1946, by whom she had a daughter Katrina in 1951. Divorced in 1953, she married former Air Force pilot Randolph Galt in 1960 and promptly left Hollywood for a 37,000-acre cattle ranch 180 miles north of Sydney, in the isolated Australian outback. The four year odyssey, including the birth of daughters Melissa and Maginal, was chronicled in her critically acclaimed autobiography Intermission: A True Story. In 1963, Baxter returned to California saying, "It's an unpardonable thing to leave LA." Following her divorce from Galt in 1968, she commented, "I gave up my career because I was very much in love. My husband didn't want me to give it up. I think he was wiser than I was."

Baxter's roles in the '60s included more television credits, like "Batman" and "Marcus Welby, M.D." In 1969, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for "The Bobbie Currier Story," an episode from the series "The Name of the Game." In 1971, she took over for Lauren Bacall as Margo Channing in the Broadway production of Applause, based on her film All About Eve; this time, however, she played the role Bette Davis had played in the 1950 movie. In 1983, Baxter replaced the ailing Davis in the television series "Hotel," staying with the show until her death from a stroke in 1985.

Perhaps Baxter's own assessment of her career helps explain why she was fated to remain in the trenches without reaching the glittering heights in Hollywood: "I'm an actress—not a personality. It's more successful to be a personality. But can you use it in every role? I don't spill over into everything I do; I do what I do from inside someone else's skin."