I have to admit that I’m not completely clear on the cutoff between Old Money and Nouveau Riche. Either way, having Frank Lloyd Wright as your grandfather makes your money considerably older than most of Hollywood’s was. It’s interesting, therefore, to discover that Anne Baxter had originally been cast as Dinah in The Philadelphia Story, since one assumes she grew up around people like that. Anne Baxter’s family lived in Indiana before moving to New York to further young Anne’s acting ambitions, so her path wouldn’t have crossed that of the actual Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, but still.
Of course, she was also about twenty years younger than Scott. Then again, she was the sort of person who can see Helen Hayes act at age ten and declare herself determined to be an actress professionally—and then make her own Broadway debut three years later. She studied under Maria Ouspenskaya, who I’ll have to get to at some point as well. Really, as a child, Baxter was already brushing shoulders with a wide array of people I’ve covered or should cover at some point. And when Katharine Hepburn didn’t like her acting style as Dinah, Baxter went to Hollywood instead.
She auditioned to be the Second Mrs. DeWinter, but she was sixteen and Hitchcock said she was too young. But she very quickly got a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. She did quite a lot of acting. Not all of her films are terrible notable, I have to say, but her sixth movie was The Magnificent Ambersons. And she did eventually work for Hitchcock, in I Confess. She was one of the Old Hollywood sorts who eventually pretty well made the move to television, and in fact she was on the show Hotel when she died.
She did not win Best Actress for All About Eve, but frankly it was a packed year even before you consider that she was up against her own costar, Bette Davis. Eleanor Parker was up for Women In Prison Melodrama Caged, and Gloria Swanson was up for Sunset Boulevard, and it’s frankly fascinating that Judy Holliday won for Born Yesterday, because it seems as though comedic performances only ever really win when the dramas split the votes, I guess. But she had won Best Supporting Actress four years earlier—in a far less packed year—for The Razor’s Edge.
And the other day, I was watching Columbo, which I find a comforting show on a lot of levels, and she was playing Columbo’s own celebrity crush, Nora Chandler—and, yes, she’s the one who did it. (This is, famously, the episode with Edith Head and her cavalcade of Oscars, minus only the one for The Sting that she hadn’t won yet.) In fact, the IMDb page helpfully points out that she and Roddy MacDowell are the only two people arrested by both Lieutenant Columbo and Batman, and if that doesn’t make you someone worth discussing, well, there’s the part that she’s suggested in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar as someone whose mannerisms to emulate. What’s being in The Magnificent Ambersons to compare to that?
Seriously, reward me for telling you that Batman/Columbo tidbit by contributing to my Patreon or Ko-fi!