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| 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 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 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. Anne died from a brain aneurysm on December 12, 1985 while walking down the street in New York City. 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 bequeathed 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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