Anne Baxter

Anne Baxter (May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985) was an American actress whose career spanned Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television. Born in Michigan City, Indiana, to Catherine Dorothy Baxter, a daughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and Kenneth Stuart Baxter, an executive with the Seagram Company, she grew up with a direct connection to one of America's most celebrated designers. Her family relocated to New York when she was six, and she was raised in Westchester County, attending The Brearley School.

Baxter's interest in acting began early. At age five she appeared in a school play, and at ten she attended a Broadway production starring Helen Hayes that prompted her to declare her intention to become an actress. By thirteen she had made her Broadway debut in Seen But Not Heard. During this formative period she studied the craft under actress and teacher Maria Ouspenskaya. At sixteen she screen-tested for the role of Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca; director Alfred Hitchcock considered her too young for the part, but the test generated offers from both MGM and 20th Century Fox. She signed with Fox, drawn by the higher salary. In 1939, she was cast as Katharine Hepburn's younger sister in The Philadelphia Story, but was replaced during the pre-Broadway run before ultimately turning her focus to Hollywood.

Her film debut came in 20 Mule Team (1940), produced by MGM, where she received fourth billing behind Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo, and Marjorie Rambeau. She followed that with The Great Profile (1940), opposite John Barrymore, and Charley's Aunt (1941), a vehicle for Jack Benny. Fox loaned her to RKO for Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), in which she played Lucy Morgan, and she received star billing in Swamp Water (1941) and The Pied Piper (1942), the latter nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. She appeared as a French maid in Billy Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and took top billing in a series of World War II dramas including The North Star (1943), The Sullivans (1944), The Eve of St. Mark (1944), and Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944), the last of which co-starred her future husband John Hodiak.

Her performance as Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), alongside Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, earned her both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Baxter later described a hospital scene in the film, in which Sophie loses her husband, child, and everything else, as her only truly great screen performance, and recalled drawing on the death of her brother, who had died at age three. In 1950, she was cast in the title role of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve, a part she modeled in part on a difficult understudy she had encountered during her Broadway debut in Seen But Not Heard. The performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Laurel Award for Topliner Female Dramatic Performance. She worked with Alfred Hitchcock again in I Confess (1953), opposite Montgomery Clift, and with Fritz Lang in The Blue Gardenia (1953). Cecil B. DeMille cast her as the Egyptian princess Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (1956), opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, a role for which she won a second Laurel Award for Topliner Female Dramatic Performance.

Baxter's Broadway career extended from 1936 to 1974. In addition to her debut in Seen But Not Heard, she appeared in Madame Capet and starred in The Square Root of Wonderful. Later stage work included A Song at Twilight and Noël Coward in Two Keys. Across her career she received an Emmy nomination and seven Photoplay Awards in addition to her Academy Award, Golden Globe, and two Laurel Awards. She died on December 12, 1985.