Warner Baxter

Early Life and Career

Warner Leroy Baxter was born on March 29^th, 1889 in Columbus, Ohio. His father, Edwin, died mere months after his birth in September of 1898. Soon after Warner's mother, Jane, decided to the family to San Francisco. He lived a quiet, average life until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, when his family lost much of their material possession to the natural disaster. He and his family were forced to live in a tent in the weeks following the devastating event. Also possessing a knack for exhibition, Baxter started his life in show business in 1910 working on the vaudeville circuit.

Baxter moved back to the Midwest, and for sometime worked on the Columbus stage. Like many struggling actors, Baxter also worked as an insurance salesman during his earliest years to make ends meet. Over the next few years Baxter sharpened his craft in various stock companies through out the Midwest. By 1917 he made it to New York, where he made his Broadway debut with a small role in the play Lombardi, Ltd. The role would be his only Broadway credit for his entire career. The next year he married his second wife, Winifried Bryson, in 1918 and would remain married to her until his death.

Film Career

By 1918 Baxter had entered the film industry with uncredited appearing in films like All Woman and Her Own Money. He eventually began to get noticed and quickly rose through the ranks. In 1921 Baxter received his first credited supporting role as Pep Mullins in the silent comedy Sheltered Daughters. He continued to play lead supporting roles in films such as The Love Charm, Her Own Money, and If I were Queen. By the mid-1920 Baxter had reached the upper echelons of film-stardom. He began to appear as the leading man in a plethora of films such as The Awful Truth, Rugged Water, A Son of His Father and Mannequin. In 1926 he starred as Jay Gatsby in the first big screen adaption of the F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It is now considered a lost film, although the film's trailer is still in existence. He continued to make a name for himself in silent films, appearing in pictures such as Drums of the Desert, The Coward and Craig's Wife.

In 1929 Baxter starred in the first all-talking, all-sound-on-film picture, In Old Arizona. In the film Baxter plays the Cisco Kid, a charming, lackadaisical bandit on the run from the local sheriff. Thanks to its advanced use of sound technology as well as Baxter's charms, the film was hit and at the first ever Academy Awards ceremony was nominated for Best Director, Best Writing, Best Cinematography and Best Picture. Baxter walked away from the ceremony as the first ever actor to win the Best Actor Academy Awards in 1929.

He remained one of Hollywood's most popular actors for next several years. Despite fact that titles such as Penthouse, Broadway Bill and The Prisoner of Shark Island are largely forgotten today, they huge hits of their times, in large thanks to Baxter's popularity. He also appeared in the 1933 hit film 42^nd Street and revived his role as the Cisco Kid in the aptly titled In Old Arizona sequel to The Cisco Kid.

Fast Decline and Later Life

By 1936 Baxter was one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. This standing, however, would drastically change in the next five years. Although highly paid, his popularity as an actor was seriously waning and many of the films he acted in, such as The Road to Glory, Wife, Doctor, and Nurse, Kidnapped and I'll Give a Million, were all forgettable or simply mediocre. He scored a success in 1939 one again playing the role of The Cisco Kid in The Return of the Cisco Kids but quickly returned to mediocrity. By the mid-1940s he was working almost exclusively in the realm of B-films. In 1944 he sighed a contract with Columbia pictures to star as Dr. Robert Orday in sere sod 'The Crime Doctor" films. Between 1943 and 1949 he starred in none Dr. Ordway films including The Crime doctor's Strange Case, The Crime Doctor's Courage, Just Before Dawn and The Crime Doctors Diary. In 1950 he appeared in his final picture State Penitentiary, before retiring from the film industry and living his last year in peace. Warner Baxter died on May 7^th, 1951. He was 62 years old.