Anne Baxter

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For the fictional soap opera character, see Anne Baxter (Neighbours).

Anne Baxter
in 1961
Born	May 7, 1923 Michigan City, Indiana, U.S.
Died	December 12, 1985 (aged 62) Guilford, New York, U.S.
Cause of death	Brain aneurysm
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1940–85
Spouse(s)	John Hodiak (m. 1946–53) (divorced) 1 child Randolph Galt (m. 1960–69) (divorced) 2 children David Klee (m. 1977–77) (his death)
Children	Katrina (Hodiak) (b. 1951) Melissa (Galt) (b. 1962) Maginel (Galt) (b. 1963)
Parents	Kenneth Stuart Baxter Catherine Wright

Anne Baxter (May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985) was an American actress known for her performances in films such as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Razor's Edge (1946), All About Eve (1950) and The Ten Commandments (1956).^[1]

Early life

Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, to Kenneth Stuart Baxter and Catherine (née Wright),^[2] whose father was the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Kenneth Baxter was a prominent executive with the Seagrams Distillery Co. and she was raised in New York City, where she attended Brearley.^[3] 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, she had appeared on Broadway. During this period, Baxter learned her acting craft as a student of the famed teacher Maria Ouspenskaya.

Career

Baxter as Eve Harrington, in the trailer for All About Eve (1950)

At 16, Baxter screen-tested for the role of Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca, losing to Joan Fontaine because director Alfred Hitchcock deemed Baxter too young for the role, but she soon secured a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first movie role was in 20 Mule Team in 1940. She was chosen by director Orson Welles to appear in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Baxter co-starred with Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney in 1946's The Razor's Edge, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Baxter later recounted that The Razor's Edge contained her only great performance which was 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.^[4] She played Mike in the 1948 Western film Yellow Sky with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark.
In 1950, Baxter was chosen to co-star in All About Eve, largely because of a resemblance to Claudette Colbert, who was originally set to star in the film, 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 thirteen and who had threatened to "finish her off".^[4] Through the 1950s she continued to act on stage. 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 whodunit The Blue Gardenia as a woman accused of murder.^[4]

Baxter with Yul Brynner, from the trailer for The Ten Commandments (1956)

Baxter is also remembered for her role as the Egyptian throne princess Nefretiri opposite Charlton Heston's portrayal of Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's award-winning The Ten Commandments (1956).
She appeared regularly on television in the 1960s. She did a stint as one of the What's My Line? "Mystery Guests" on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV quiz program. She also starred as guest villain "Zelda the Great" in episodes 9 and 10 of the television series Batman. 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 also played an old flame of Raymond Burr on his crime series Ironside.
Baxter returned to 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 (succeeding Lauren Bacall, who won a Tony Award in the role).
In the 1970s, Baxter was a frequent guest and stand-in host on The Mike Douglas Show, since Baxter and host Mike Douglas were friends. She portrayed a murderous film star on an episode of Columbo, called "Requiem for a Fallen Star". In 1971, she also had a role in Fools' Parade, as an aging prostitute who helps characters played by Jimmy Stewart, Strother Martin, and Kurt Russell escape from the villain, played by George Kennedy. In 1983, Baxter starred in the television series Hotel, replacing Bette Davis after Davis became ill.
Baxter has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6741 Hollywood Blvd.

Personal life

In 1946, Baxter married actor John Hodiak. They had one daughter, Katrina, born 1951. Baxter and Hodiak divorced in 1953, which she later blamed on herself.^[5] He died one-and-a-half years later.
In 1960, Baxter married her second husband, Randolph Galt. Galt was the American owner of a neighboring cattle station near Sydney, Australia, where she was filming Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. She left Hollywood with Katrina to live with him on a remote 37,000 acres (150 km²) cattle station he bought 180 miles (290 km) north of Sydney called Giro (pronounced Ghee-ro). During this time, they had two daughters, Melissa (b. 1962) and Maginel (b. 1963). In 1976, Baxter recounted her courtship with Galt (whom she called "Ran") and their experiences at Giro in a well-received book called Intermission. After the birth of Maginel, back in California, Galt unexpectedly announced that they were moving to an 11,000 acres (45 km²) ranch south of Grants, New Mexico.^[5] They then moved to Hawaii (his home state) before settling back in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.^[6] Baxter and Galt were divorced in 1969. Melissa Galt became an interior designer and then a business coach, speaker and seminar provider.^[7] Maginel became a cloistered Roman Catholic nun, reportedly living in Rome, Italy.^[8]^[9]
Baxter married again, in 1977 to David Klee, a prominent 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. Baxter never remarried. Although she maintained a residence in West Hollywood, Baxter considered her Connecticut home to be her primary residence.^{[citation needed]} Baxter was passionate about music, and was an active benefactor of The Connecticut Early Music Society.
Baxter was a longtime friend of celebrated costume designer Edith Head, whom she first met on the set of All About Eve. Head appeared with Baxter in a cameo role in Requiem For A Falling Star, a 1973 Columbo episode. Upon Head's death in 1981, Melissa Galt, who was also a goddaughter of Head,^[10] was bequeathed Head's jewelry collection.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Baxter suffered a brain aneurysm on December 4, 1985,^[11] while hailing a taxi on Madison Avenue in New York City. She died eight days later at in Guilford, New York on December 12, aged 62, according to her Connecticut death certificate.
Baxter is buried on the estate of Frank Lloyd Wright at Lloyd Jones Cemetery in Spring Green, Wisconsin.^[12] She was survived by her three daughters.^[13]

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1940	20 Mule Team	Joan Johnson
1940	The Great Profile	Mary Maxwell
1941	Charley's Aunt	Amy Spettigue
1941	Swamp Water	Julie
1942	The Pied Piper	Nicole Rougeron
1942	The Magnificent Ambersons	Lucy
1943	Crash Dive	Jean Hewlett
	Five Graves to Cairo	Mouche
	The North Star	Marina Pavlov
1944	The Fighting Sullivans	Katherine Mary Sullivan
	The Eve of St. Mark	Janet Feller
	Sunday Dinner for a Soldier	Tessa Osborne
	Guest in the House	Evelyn Heath
	The Purple Heart	Anne	(voice, uncredited)
1945	A Royal Scandal	Countess Anna Jaschikoff
1946	Smoky	Julie Richards
	Angel on My Shoulder	Barbara Foster
	The Razor's Edge	Sophie MacDonald	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
1947	Blaze of Noon	Lucille Stewart
1947	Mother Wore Tights	Narrator	(voice, uncredited)
1948	Homecoming	Mrs. Penny Johnson
	The Walls of Jericho	Julia Norman
	The Luck of the Irish	Nora
	Yellow Sky	Constance Mae "Mike"
1949	You're My Everything	Hannah Adams
1950	A Ticket to Tomahawk	Kit Dodge Jr.
1950	All About Eve	Eve	Nominated-Academy Award for Best Actress
1951	Follow the Sun	Valerie Hogan
1952	The Outcasts of Poker Flat	Cal
	O. Henry's Full House	Joanna Goodwin	segment: The Last Leaf
	My Wife's Best Friend	Virginia Mason
1953	I Confess	Ruth Grandfort
1953	The Blue Gardenia	Norah Larkin
1954	Carnival Story	Willie
1955	Bedevilled	Monica Johnson
	One Desire	Tacey Cromwell
	The Spoilers	Cherry Malotte
1956	The Come On	Rita
	The Ten Commandments	Nefretiri
	Three Violent People	Lorna Hunter Saunders
1957	General Electric Theater	Maj. Edith Johansen	episode: Bitter Choice
1958	Chase a Crooked Shadow	Kimberley Prescott
	Playhouse 90	Pat Bass	episode: The Right Hand Man
	Lux Playhouse	Delphine Murphy	episode: The Four
	General Electric Theater	Stella Rutledge	episode: Stopover
1959	Summer of the Seventeenth Doll	Olive
	Riverboat	Ellie Jenkins	episode: A Race to Cincinnati
	Wagon Train	Kitty Angel	episode: The Kitty Angel Story
	Zane Grey Theater	Laura Fletcher	episode: Hand on the Latch
1960	Cimarron	Dixie Lee
	The DuPont Show with June Allyson	Louise	episode: The Dance Man
	Checkmate (TV series)	Beatrice Martin Kipp	episode: Death Runs Wild
	General Electric Theater	Ella Harley	episode: Goodbye, My Love
1962	Mix Me a Person	Dr. Anne Dyson
1962	Walk on the Wild Side	Teresina Vidaverri
1963	The Alfred Hitchcock Hour	Janice Brandt	episode: A Nice Touch
1964	Dr. Kildare	Nora Willis	episode: A Day to Remember
1965	The Family Jewels	Actress in In-Flight Movie	(uncredited)
1965	The Loner	Agatha Phelps
1966	Seven Vengeful Women	Mary Ann
1967	The Busy Body	Margo Foster Kane
	Stranger on the Run	Valverda Johnson	(TV movie)
	My Three Sons	Eileen Talbot	episode: Designing Women
	Cowboy in Africa	Erica Holloway	episode: Search for Survival
1966–67	Batman	Olga Olga, Queen of the Cossacks Zelda	7 episodes
1968	The F.B.I.	Katherine Daly	episode: Region of Peril
	Run for Your Life	Mona Morrison	episode: Life Among the Meat-Eaters
	Companions in Nightmare	Carlotta Mauridge	(TV movie)
	The Virginian	Nora Carlton	episode: Nora
	Ironside	Caroline White	episode: An Obvious Case of Guilt
	The Name of the Game	Magda Blain	episode: The Protector
1969	Ironside	Miss Flynn	episode: Programmed for Danger
	The Name of the Game	Betty Jean Currier	episode: The Bobby Currier Story Nominated- Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
	Marcus Welby, M.D.	Myra Sherwood	episode: A Matter of Humanities episode: Madonna with Knapsack and Flute
1970	The Challengers	Stephanie York	(TV movie)
	Ritual of Evil	Jolene Wiley	(TV movie)
	Bracken's World	Marian Harper	episode: Diffusion
	The Name of the Game	Magda Blain Louise Harris	episode: The Takeover episode: All the Old Familiar Faces
	Marcus Welby, M.D.	Myra Sherwood	episode: Go Get 'Em, Tiger
1971	Fools' Parade	Cleo
	[The Late Liz	Liz Addams Hatch
	If Tomorrow Comes	Miss Cramer	(TV movie)
1972	The Catcher	Kate	(TV movie)
1973	Marcus Welby, M.D.	Julie Langley Kirk	episode: A Necessary End
	Columbo	Nora Chandler	episode: Requiem for a Falling Star
	Cannon	Mayor Helen Blythe	episode: He Who Digs a Grave
	Love Story	Ellen McKinley	episode: All My Tomorrows
	Banacek	Leslie Lyle	episode: If Max Is So Smart, Why Doesn't He Tell Us Where He Is?
	Mannix	Victoria Page	episode: The Deadly Madonna
	Lisa, Bright and Dark	Margaret Schilling	(TV movie)
1976	Arthur Hailey's The Moneychangers	Edwina Dorsey	(TV miniseries)
1978	Little Mo	Jessamyn Connelly	(TV movie)
1979	Nero Wolfe	Mrs. Rachel Bruner
1980	Jane Austen in Manhattan	Lilliana Zorska
1980	Hagen	Claudette	episode: The Straw Man
1981	East of Eden	Kate	(TV minseries) episode: Part One (credit only) episode: Part Two episode: Part Three (credit only)
1981	The Love Boat	Priscilla Crawford	episode: Model Marriage, A/This Year's Model/Original Sin/Vogue Rogue/Too Clothes for Comfort
1984	Sherlock Holmes and the Mask of Death	Irene Adler	(TV movie)
1985	The Love Boat	Helen Williams	episode: Call Me Grandma/A Gentleman of Discretion/The Perfect Divorce/Letting Go
1983–86	Hotel	Victoria Cabot	75 episodes
References:^[14]