Warner Baxter

Warner Leroy Baxter (March 29, 1889 – May 7, 1951) was an American film actor from the 1910s to the 1940s. Baxter is known for his role as the Cisco Kid in the 1928 film In Old Arizona, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 2nd Academy Awards. He frequently played womanizing, charismatic Latin bandit types in Westerns, and played the Cisco Kid or a similar character throughout the 1930s, but had a range of other roles throughout his career.

Baxter began his movie career in silent films with his most notable roles being in The Great Gatsby (1926) and The Awful Truth (1925). Baxter's most notable talkies are In Old Arizona (1929), 42nd Street (1933), Slave Ship (1937) with Wallace Beery, Kidnapped (1938) with Freddie Bartholomew, and the 1931 ensemble short film, The Stolen Jools. In the 1940s, he was well known for his recurring role as Dr. Robert Ordway in the Crime Doctor series of 10 films.

For his contributions to the motion-picture industry, Baxter has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Baxter was born on March 29, 1889, in Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, to Edwin F. Baxter, a cigar stand operator, and Jennie (Jane) B. Barrett. Baxter's father died before Warner was five, and he and his mother went to live with her brother. They later moved to New York City, where he became active in dramatics, both participating in school productions and attending plays. In 1898, the two moved to San Francisco, where he graduated from Polytechnic High School. The pair were temporarily displaced by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, then returned to Columbus in 1908. After selling farm implements for a living, Baxter worked for four months as the partner of Dorothy Shoemaker in an act on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit.

Baxter began his film career as an extra in 1914 in a stock company. He had his first starring role in 1921 in Sheltered Daughters. That same year he acted in First Love, The Love Charm, and Cheated Hearts.

Baxter would go on to star in 48 features during the 1920s. His most notable silent roles were in The Great Gatsby (1926), Aloma of the South Seas (1926) as an island love interest opposite dancer Gilda Gray, and as an alcoholic doctor in West of Zanzibar (1928) with Lon Chaney.

David Shipman wrote in 1970,

"He is the beau ideal, a Valentino without a horse and the costume of a sheik. He is the fellow the girls meet around the corner, that is, if the fellow were Warner Baxter. He is the chap the lonely woman on the prairie sees when she looks at the men's ready-to-wear pages in the latest mail order catalogue"; this appraisal by Jim Tully appeared in Picturegoer in 1936. Baxter was certainly the inspiration for artwork in mail-order catalogues and adverts for pipes, the prototype for men modelling cardigans or pullovers or tweeds. During the early Sound period he was one of Hollywood's leading actors. There was no éclat with him no scandals, no Hollywood careering. Women liked him because he was mature and reliable. He was a good work-horse of an actor, often at the mercy of his material. When it was good, he gave positive, likeable performances. It was a long career but he is hardly remembered today.

Baxter's most notable starring role was as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1929), the first all-talking Western, for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor. He also starred in 42nd Street (1933), Grand Canary (1934), Broadway Bill (1934), and Kidnapped (1938).

By 1936, Baxter was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, but by 1943, he had slipped to B movie roles, and he starred in a series of Crime Doctor films for Columbia Pictures. Baxter had roles in more than 100 films between 1914 and 1950. In 1936, Baxter had what Leonard Maltin considered his finest job of acting in John Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island.

Personal troubles and breakdown

It was about this time that Baxter began to have career and personal troubles. The studio system and being a top leading man with Fox made him wealthy beyond his dreams but it also let him in for some significant personal problems. Baxter said he was envious of his friend, Ronald Colman. "Look at that guy. He only makes one or two pictures a year. I've got to work practically every day in the year." He seemed unable to pry himself away from his salary as a contract star. Some of his best roles in this period were on loan out from his home studio, Fox Picture Corporation. His MGM loan out for Robin Hood of El Dorado was an example. Director William Wellman's recollections in the 2015 biography by his son went into some detail. Baxter, according to Wellman, was aging and troubled by that, as evidenced by a major drinking problem. Baxter told Wellman he was fine during the day but as evening approached he was "gone". Adding to his own insecurities as a leading man, his home studio was not known for having a strong story department. They relied on the formula of having their major stars repeat the same type of stories and characters when it reverberated with an audience. In many cases, even for Will Rogers, it often would decrease the value of the actor's contract.

By 1939 he was publicly complaining about being teamed up with new bright and very young actresses as he was advancing in years. He said working with Loretta Young was fine as she had been around since the silent days and fans did not view her as a youngster, but the new crop such as Lynn Bari and Arleen Whelan made him feel very uncomfortable. As his 20th Century Fox contract was nearing completion, he was openly talking of retiring, a decision he was making with his wife, Winifred Bryson. By 1941, columnist Jimmie Fidler was stating the retirement talk was on the level. Some time between Adam Had Four Sons and Lady in the Dark he suffered a mental breakdown. Over the subsequent years he was fairly candid about it in interviews. He said "It's like chasing a rainbow. You never see the end of it. Each part you get has to be better than the last one and before you know it you've got a nervous breakdown."

The reported $284,000 ($5,315,313.12 in 2019) Baxter earned in 1936 was the highest paid contract actor that year. By 1947 he was reduced to earning $30,000 ($348,337.37 in 2019) per picture, in a mere two picture deal.He was, however, more comfortable both with his career and his life, giving much credit to his wife. "I never take a role until we both talk it over. I have a high opinion of her judgment". He said he no longer cared about high budget films or being a star. "I don't need the money, and I work just to keep interested. I had a good part in a big picture about six years ago. There was tension in making it and I felt myself getting nervous again." They moved to their beach house in Malibu, soaking up the sun and gradually getting better. Baxter felt that the best role in motion pictures was being a leading man in a series. He had reached that conclusion during the production years of the various Crime Doctor films. "It's wonderful. I make two of them a year. Columbia has juggled it so I can make two in a row. That takes about eight weeks of my time. The rest of the year I relax. I travel. I enjoy life".

Baxter married Viola Caldwell in 1911, but they were soon separated and then divorced in 1913. He married actress Winifred Bryson in 1918, remaining married until his death in 1951. Through his marriage to Bryson he was an uncle by marriage to actress Betty Bryson. Betty Bryson was born Elizabeth Bryson Meikklejohn, daughter of Winifred's sister, Vivian.

On August 5, 1931, Baxter survived uninjured with 40 other cast and crew members the train derailment of the Southern Pacific Argonaut east of Yuma on route to Tucson for location shooting for The Cisco Kid. Two trainmen were killed in the derailment. Baxter, Conchita Montenegro, and Edmund Lowe were among the passengers in cars at the end of the train.

The Baxter beach house was at 77 Malibu Beach, Malibu, California, for many years as noted in its 1942 voter roll. He also had a cabin in the San Jacinto Mountains. He was very active in Malibu civic affairs and was named Honorary Mayor of Malibu from 1946, replacing Brian Donlevy, through 1949. For a number of years he had an 80-acre working ranch about 12 miles north of Palm Springs at Desert Hot Springs, the Warner Baxter Ranch, later renamed the Circle B Ranch. It was used for years as a location for western films. It was listed for sale in mid 1945 for a price of $40,000 and sold over a year later.

During the war Baxter was chairman of the Malibu Rationing Board and also did some troop entertaining in Army camps in the Fresno and Bakersfield areas. He and his entertainers put on dozens of day and night shows for the service men.

Baxter was a close friend of William Powell, with whom he had starred in three silent films, the best of which was The Great Gatsby now considered lost. He was at Powell's side when Jean Harlow died in 1937. His friendship with Ronald Colman was perhaps even deeper. While tennis and the film industry were the origins of their friendship going back to their earlier days at Paramount Studios, Colman and his wife Benita Hume named Baxter and Tim McCoy as godfathers to their daughter, Juliet Benita Colman, at her christening in 1944. Juliet Colman's biography of her father describes in detail the very private social circle of cocktails, dinner and games of tennis or poker held between her father's Hollywood house at 2092 Mound Street above and behind the Castle Argyle, and Baxter's home on South Beachwood Drive.

When not acting, Baxter was an inventor who co-created a searchlight for revolvers in 1935, which allowed a shooter to more clearly see a target at night. He also developed a radio device that allowed emergency crews to change traffic signals from two blocks away, providing them with safe passage through intersections. He financed the device's installation at a Beverly Hills intersection in 1940.

Baxter suffered from arthritis for several years, as well as a chronic illness which caused eating difficulties and induced malnutrition. In 1951 he underwent a lobotomy as a last resort to ease the chronic pain. On May 7, 1951, he died of pneumonia at age 62 and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California in a private funeral service described as markedly reminiscent of the film capital's earlier days. Among his pallbearers were long time close friends Ronald Colman and William Powell.He left all his property to his wife.

Winifred married St. Louis architect Ferdinand Herman Menger at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 15, 1953. They would remain married until the end of her life.

In 1960, Baxter posthumously received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6284 Hollywood Boulevard.

• Van Neste, Dan."The Accidental Star: The Life and Films of Warner Baxter." Albany, GA: BearManor Media, 2023.