Warner Baxter

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Warner Baxter

Birth name Warner Leroy Baxter
Born March 29, 1889
Columbus, Ohio, USA
Died May 7, 1951
Beverly Hills, California, USA
Academy Awards
Best Actor
1929 In Old Arizona

Warner Baxter (March 29, 1889 - May 7, 1951) was an American actor. Born in Columbus, Ohio, he moved to San Francisco, California when he was nine. Following the 1906 earthquake, he and his family lived in a tent for two weeks. By 1910 Baxter was in vaudeville, and from there began acting on the stage.

Warner Baxter began as an extra in 1918 and quickly rose to become a star. He had his first starring role in 1921, in a film called Sheltered Daughters and he quickly became one of the most popular actors of the decade. He starred in forty-eight features during the 1920s. His most famous 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 Broadway Bill (1934) and in Kidnapped (1938).

By 1936, Baxter was the highest paid actor in Hollywood, but by 1943, he had slipped to B-movie roles, and he began to star in a series of Crime Doctor films. Baxter made over a hundred films between 1914 and 1950.

Suffering the pain of arthritis, Baxter had a lobotomy to ease the pain. He died shortly after of pneumonia and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6290 Hollywood Boulevard.

[edit] Partial Filmography

Preceded by
Emil Jannings
for The Last Command and
The Way of All Flesh
Academy Award for Best Actor
1929
for In Old Arizona
Succeeded by
George Arliss
for Disraeli

[edit] External link