Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter (
May 7,
1923 –
December 12,
1985) was an
Academy Award-winning
American actress.
Baxter was born in
Michigan City, Indiana, to Kenneth Stuart Baxter and Catherine Wright; her maternal grandfather was
architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Baxter's father was a prominent executive with the
Seagrams Distillery Co. and she was raised in
New York City amidst luxury and sophistication. At age 10, Baxter attended a Broadway play starring
Helen Hayes, and was so impressed that she declared to her family that she wanted to become an actress. By the age of 13, Anne had appeared on
Broadway. During this period, Baxter learned her acting craft as a student of the famed teacher
Maria Ouspenskaya.
Baxter screen-tested for the role of Mrs. DeWinter in
Rebecca, but lost out to
Joan Fontaine because director
Alfred Hitchcock considered her "too young" for the role. The strength of that first foray into movie acting secured the then sixteen-year-old Baxter a seven year contract with
20th Century Fox. Her first movie role was in
20 Mule Team in
1940. She was chosen by
Orson Welles to appear in
The Magnificent Ambersons, based on the novel by
Booth Tarkington. Baxter didn't have a starring role until
The Razor's Edge in
1946, for which she won the
Oscar for
Best Supporting Actress.
In
1950 she was chosen to co-star in
All About Eve, largely because of a resemblance to
Claudette Colbert, who had initially been chosen to co-star in the film. Baxter received a nomination for
Best Actress for the title role of Eve Harrington, which is one of Baxter's enduring legacies to the history of cinema. Later during that decade, Baxter also continued to act in professional theater. According to a program from the production, Baxter appeared on Broadway in 1953 opposite
Tyrone Power in
Charles Laughton's
John Brown's Body, a play based upon the narrative poem by
Stephen Vincent Benet (though IBDB-- International Broadway Database states that Power's co-star was
Judith Anderson)
Today, Baxter is probably best remembered for her compelling role as the
Egyptian princess
Nefretiri opposite
Charlton Heston's portrayal of
Moses in
Cecil B. Demille's award winning
The Ten Commandments (
1956).
Baxter appeared regularly on television in the
1960s. For example, she did a stint as one of the
What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV program.
Baxter appeared again on Broadway during the
1970s, in
Applause, the musical version of
All About Eve, but this time in the "Margo Channing" role played by
Bette Davis in the film (she was replacing
Lauren Bacall, who won a
Tony Award in the role). Bette Davis tells, in one of her biographies, of attending one such performance by Baxter, to their mutual delight.
In the
1970s, Baxter was a frequent guest and stand-in host on the popular daytime TV talk-fest, The
Mike Douglas Show, as Baxter and Douglas were the best of friends.
In
1983, she starred in the
television series Hotel after replacing Bette Davis in the cast after Davis took ill. Baxter has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6741 Hollywood Blvd.
In the
1950s, Baxter was married to and then divorced from actor
John Hodiak. That union produced Baxter's oldest daughter, Katrina. In
1961, Baxter and her second husband, Randolph Galt, left the
United States to live and raise their kids on a cattle station in the
Australian
outback. She told the story in her memoir
Intermission: A True Story. In the book, Baxter blamed the failure of her first marriage to Hodiak on herself.
Though her second marriage to Galt did not last much longer, Baxter and Galt had two daughters together: Melissa and Maginel. Privately during this period, Baxter chose to refer to herself as Ann Galt amongst her neighbors in
Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, probably as a way to downplay her star status and to raise her daughters as normally as possible. Baxter was briefly married again in
1977 to David Klee, a prominent
stockbroker, but then she was abruptly widowed with his sudden death to illness. Baxter never again married.
Baxter died from a
brain aneurysm on December 12, 1985, while walking down
Madison Avenue in
New York City.
Baxter was survived upon her passing by her three adult daughters. A footnote is that Baxter was a lifelong friend of the late costume designer
Edith Head. Upon Head's death in
1981, Baxter's daughter Melissa was bequeathed Head's extraordinary collection of jewelry. Melissa Galt today works as an interior designer in Atlanta. Baxter's daughter Katrina Hodiak ultimately married and had children. Baxter's daughter Maginel Galt is reportedly a
Catholic nun living and working in
Rome, Italy.
20 Mule Team (
1940)
The Great Profile (
1940)
Charley's Aunt (
1941)
Swamp Water (
1941)
The Pied Piper (
1942)
The Magnificent Ambersons (
1942)
Crash Dive (
1943)
Five Graves to Cairo (
1943)
The North Star (
1943)
The Sullivans (
1944)
The Eve of St. Mark (
1944)
Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (
1944)
Guest in the House (
1944)
A Royal Scandal (
1945)
Smoky (
1946)
Angel on My Shoulder (
1946)
The Razor's Edge (
1946)
Blaze of Noon (
1947)
Mother Wore Tights (
1947) (narrator)
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)
O. Henry's Full House (
1952)
My Wife's Best Friend (
1952)
I Confess (
1953)
The Blue Gardenia (
1953)
Carnival Story (
1954) (there was also a German version of this film made the same year entitled
Circus of Love, in which the cast made cameo appearances)
Bedevilled (
1955)
One Desire (
1955)
The Spoilers (
1955)
The Come On (
1956)
The Ten Commandments (
1956)
Chase a Crooked Shadow (
1957)
Three Violent People (
1957)
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (
1959)
Cimarron (
1960)
Mix Me a Person (
1962)
Walk on the Wild Side (
1962)
The Family Jewels (
1965) (Cameo)
Seven Vengeful Women (
1966)
The Busy Body (
1967)
Fools' Parade (
1971)
The Late Liz (
1971)
Jane Austen in Manhattan (
1980)
*
Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Anne Baxter*
Find-A-Grave profile for Anne Baxter*
Baxter on Broadway: IBDB entry
