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Anne Baxter
(May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985) was an American actress. 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, Madame Maria
Ouspenskaya.
Baxter had 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 The Fox Film Co. which
later became 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
Academy Award 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 role.
In the 50s, 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, Anne 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 were blessed with two daughters
together: Melissa and Maginel.
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The role of Eve Harrington is, of course, Anne Baxter's enduring legacy. In
an ironic twist, Baxter appeared again on Broadway during the 70s, in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve, but
finally in the "Margo Channing" role (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 70s, 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. Also during that decade, Baxter was married again in 1977, briefly to David Klee, a prominent stockbroker, but then she was
abrubtly widowed with his sudden death to illness. Baxter never again
married.
In 1983, she starred in the television series
Hotel
after ironically replacing Bette Davis in the cast after Davis took ill. Baxter
has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6741 Hollywood
Blvd.
Ms. Baxter was survived upon her passing by her three adult daughters. A
footnote is that Ms. Baxter was a lifelong friend of the late costume-designer,
Edith Head. Upon Ms. Head's
death in 1981, Baxter's daughter Melissa was
bequethed Ms. 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 purported
today to be a Catholic nun living and working in Rome, Italy.
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