| Warner Baxter | |
|---|---|
| Born | Warner Leroy Baxter March 29, 1889 Columbus, Ohio, United States |
| Died | May 7, 1951 (aged 62) Beverly Hills, California, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1914–1950 |
| Spouse | Viola Caldwell (1911-1913) Winifried Bryson (1918–1951) |
Warner Leroy Baxter (March 29, 1889 – May 7, 1951) was an American actor, known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1929), for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1928–1929 Academy Awards. Warner Baxter started his movie career in silent movies. Baxter's most notable silent films are probably The Great Gatsby (1926) and The Awful Truth (1925). Today The Great Gatsby is one of many lost films of the silent era. When talkies came out, Baxter became even more famous. Baxter's most notable talkies are In Old Arizona (1929) 42nd Street (1932), and the 1931 20 minute short film, The Slippery Pearls.
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Baxter was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to San Francisco, California with his widowed mother in 1898, when he was nine. Following the 1906 San Francisco 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.
Baxter originally worked as an insurance agent, sales manager and commercial traveller. Baxter began his movie career as an extra in 1914 in a stock company and quickly rose to become a star. He had his first starring role in 1921, in a film called Sheltered Daughters. He starred 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 the famous dancer Gilda Gray and a handsome but alcoholic doctor in West of Zanzibar with Lon Chaney. 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 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 made over 100 films between 1914 and 1950.[1]
Baxter married actress Winifred Bryson in 1918, remaining married until his death in 1951. He suffered for several years from arthritis, and in 1951 he underwent a lobotomy to ease the pain.[2] He died shortly after of pneumonia and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Baxter was a close friend of William Powell with whom he starred in three films and was at Powell's side when Jean Harlow died in 1937.[1]
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6290 Hollywood Boulevard.
When not acting, Baxter was an inventor and in 1935 co-created a revolver searchlight which would illiminate a target and allow a gunman to shoot at it in the dark. He later developed a radio device that would allow emergency crews to change traffic signals from two-blocks away and allow them to safely pass through intersections. He financed its installation at an intersection in Beverly Hills in 1940.[1]
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1914 | Her Own Money | uncredited | |
| 1918 | All Woman | uncredited | |
| 1919 | Lombardi, Ltd. | uncredited | |
| 1921 | First Love | Donald Halliday | |
| Cheated Hearts | Tom Gordon | ||
| The Love Charm | Thomas Morgan | ||
| Sheltered Daughters | Pep Mullins | ||
| 1922 | If I Were Queen | Vladimir | |
| A Girl's Desire | Jones/Lord Dysart | ||
| The Ninety and Nine | Tom Silverton/Phil Bradbury | ||
| The Girl in His Room | Kirk Waring | ||
| Her Own Money | Lew Alden | ||
| 1923 | St. Elmo | Murray Hammond | |
| Blow Your Own Horn | Jack Dunbar | ||
| In Search of a Thrill | Adrian Torrens | ||
| Those Who Dance | Bob Kane | ||
| 1924 | Christine of the Hungry Heart | Stuart Knight | |
| The Female | Col. Valentia | ||
| His Forgotten Wife | Donald Allen/John Rolfe | ||
| Alimony | Jimmy Mason | ||
| The Garden of Weeds | Douglas Crawford | ||
| 1925 | The Best People | Henry Morgan | |
| A Son of His Father | Big Boy Morgan | ||
| Rugged Water | Calvin Horner | ||
| Welcome Home | Fred Prouty | ||
| The Awful Truth | Norman Satterlee | ||
| The Air Mail | Russ Kane | ||
| The Golden Bed | Bunny O'Neill | ||
| Mismates | Ted Carroll | ||
| 1926 | Aloma of the South Seas | Nuitane | |
| The Runaway | Wade Murrell | ||
| Mannequin | John Herrick | ||
| The Great Gatsby | Jay Gatsby | now a lost film | |
| Miss Brewster's Millions | Thomas B. Hancock Jr | ||
| 1927 | The Coward | Clinton Philbrook | |
| Singed | Royce Wingate | ||
| Drums of the Desert | John Curry | ||
| The Telephone Girl | Matthew Standish | ||
| Craig's Wife | Walter Craig | ||
| 1928 | Danger Street | Rolly Sigsby | |
| Ramona | Alessandro | ||
| Three Sinners | James Harris | ||
| The Tragedy of Youth | Frank Gordon | ||
| West of Zanzibar | Doc | directed by Tod Browning | |
| A Woman's Way | Tony | ||
| In Old Arizona | The Cisco Kid | Academy Award for Best Actor | |
| 1929 | Romance of the Rio Grande | Pablo Wharton Cameron | |
| Behind That Curtain | Col. John Beetham | ||
| The Far Call | |||
| Thru Different Eyes | Jack Winfield | ||
| Linda | Dr. Paul Randall | ||
| 1930 | Renegades | Deucalion | |
| Such Men Are Dangerous | Ludwig Kranz | ||
| The Arizona Kid | The Cisco Kid | ||
| The Squaw Man | James 'Jim' Wingate, aka Jim Carston | ||
| 1931 | Their Mad Moment | Esteban Cristera | |
| Doctors' Wives | Dr. Judson Penning | ||
| The Stolen Jools | The Cisco Kid | ||
| Daddy Long Legs | Jervis Pendleton | ||
| The Cisco Kid | The Cisco Kid | ||
| Surrender | Sgt. Dumaine | ||
| 1932 | Six Hours to Live | Capt. Paul Onslow | |
| Man About Town | Stephen Morrow | ||
| Amateur Daddy | Jim Gladden | ||
| 1933 | Dangerously Yours | Andrew Burke | |
| 42nd Street | Julian Marsh | ||
| I Loved You Wednesday | Philip Fletcher | ||
| Paddy the Next Best Thing | Lawrence Blake | ||
| Penthouse | Jackson 'Jack' Durant | ||
| 1934 | Hell in the Heavens | Lt. Steve Warner | |
| As Husbands Go | Charles Lingard | ||
| Grand Canary | Dr. Harvey Leith | ||
| Stand Up and Cheer! | Lawrence Cromwell | ||
| Such Women Are Dangerous | Michael Shawn | ||
| Broadway Bill | Dan Brooks | ||
| 1935 | Under the Pampas Moon | Cesar Campo | |
| One More Spring | Jaret Otkar | ||
| La Fiesta de Santa Barbara | Short film | ||
| 1936 | White Hunter | Capt. Clark Rutledge | |
| To Mary – with Love | Jack Wallace | ||
| The Road to Glory | Captain Paul La Roche | ||
| The Prisoner of Shark Island | Dr. Samuel Mudd | ||
| King of Burlesque | Kerry Bolton | ||
| The Robin Hood of El Dorado | Joaquin Murrieta | ||
| 1937 | Wife, Doctor and Nurse | Dr. Judd Lewis | |
| Vogues of 1938 | George Curson | ||
| Slave Ship | Jim Lovett | ||
| 1938 | I'll Give a Million | Tony Newlander | |
| Kidnapped | Alan Breck | ||
| 1939 | Barricade | Hank Topping | |
| Wife, Husband and Friend | Leonard Borland aka Logan Bennett | ||
| Return of the Cisco Kid | The Cisco Kid | ||
| 1940 | Earthbound | Nick Desborough | |
| 1941 | Adam Had Four Sons | Adam Stoddard | |
| 1943 | Crime Doctor | Dr. Robert Ordway, formerly Phil Morgan | first of 10 films in the Crime Doctor B-film series |
| Crime Doctor's Strangest Case | Dr. Robert Ordway | ||
| 1944 | Shadows in the Night | Dr. Robert Ordway | |
| Lady in the Dark | Kendall Nesbitt | ||
| 1945 | Crime Doctor's Warning | Dr. Robert Ordway | |
| The Crime Doctor's Courage | Dr. Robert Ordway | ||
| 1946 | Crime Doctor's Man Hunt | Dr. Robert Ordway | |
| Just Before Dawn | Dr. Robert Ordway | ||
| 1947 | Crime Doctor's Gamble | Dr. Robert Ordway | |
| The Millerson Case | Dr. Robert Ordway | ||
| 1948 | The Gentleman From Nowhere | Earl Donovan/Robert Ashton | |
| 1949 | The Crime Doctor's Diary | Dr. Robert Ordway | last of the Crime Doctor series |
| The Devil's Henchman | Jess Arno | ||
| Prison Warden | Warden Victor Burnell | ||
| 1950 | State Penitentiary | Rodger Manners | |
| 1952 | O. Henry's Full House | clip of Baxter from The Cisco Kid |
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