The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (30 page)

Anne Baxter
(1923–85), b. Michigan City, Indiana
The granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, she made her stage debut at age twelve in
Seen But Not Heard
, and her movie debut in
Twenty Mule Team
(40, Richard Thorpe). After testing unsuccessfully for
Rebecca
(at age sixteen!), she had her first hit in
The Great Profile
(40, Walter Lang) and was contracted by Fox. Without ever establishing a dominant screen persona, she made a string of good films and seldom appeared other than intelligent and attractive: capable at the age of nineteen of playing the “Goodbye, George” scene in
The Magnificent Ambersons
(42, Orson Welles); she won an Oscar as supporting actress in
The Razor’s Edge
(46, Edmund Goulding); and was credibly a match for Bette Davis as the sweetly conniving Eve Harrington in
All About Eve
(50, Joseph L. Mankiewicz).

Her other films include
Charley’s Aunt
(41, Archie Mayo);
Swamp Water
(41, Jean Renoir);
The Pied Piper
(42, Irving Pichel);
Five Graves to Cairo
(43, Billy Wilder);
The North Star
(43, Lewis Milestone);
Sunday Dinner for a Soldier
(44, Lloyd Bacon);
The Sullivans
(44, Bacon);
Guest in the House
(44, John Brahm);
The Eve of St. Mark
(44, John M. Stahl);
A Royal Scandal
(45, Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch);
Angel on My Shoulder
(46, Mayo);
Blaze of Noon
(47, John Farrow);
The Walls of Jericho
(48, Stahl);
Yellow Sky
(48, William Wellman);
Homecoming
(48, Mervyn Le Roy);
You’re My Everything
(49, Lang); as golfer Ben Hogan’s wife in
Follow the Sun
(51, Sidney Lanfield);
The Outcasts of Poker Flats
(52, Joseph Newman); the “Last Leaf” episode of
O. Henry’s Full House
(52, Jean Negulesco);
I Confess
(52, Alfred Hitchcock);
The Blue Gardenia
(52, Fritz Lang);
Carnival Story
(54, Kurt Neumann);
Bedevilled
(55, Mitchell Leisen);
The Ten Commandments
(56, Cecil B. De Mille);
Three Violent People
(57, Rudolph Maté);
Chase a Crooked Shadow
(58, Michael Anderson);
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
(60, Leslie Norman);
Cimarron
(61, Anthony Mann); and
Walk on the Wild Side
(62, Edward Dmytryk).

After that, she made fewer films and too many wasteful TV appearances:
The Busy Body
(66, William Castle), and
Dynamite Man from Glory Jail
(71, Andrew V. McLaglen). But when Lauren Bacall left the American production of
Applause
, it was the original Eve who took her part as Margo Channing—one of life’s braver attempts to match art.

Her 1976 autobiography,
Intermission
, was far better and funnier than most books of its kind, partly because it makes clear how important it was to her to be married to an American who ranched in Australia.

She played in
Jane Austen in Manhattan
(80, James Ivory); she was in the TV production of
East of Eden
(81, Harvey Hart); she narrated a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright (Murray Grigor); and just before her death she appeared in
Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death
(84, Roy Ward Baker).

Warner Baxter
(1891–1951), b. Columbus, Ohio
By the early 1940s, Baxter’s popularity was slipping away. All through the 1930s, he had seemed the “mature” man, looking rather older than was the case. Illness and public neglect added gravity to his face and he soldiered on for his last ten years, intent perhaps on making one hundred movies. He died two short, and is now hardly known because only a handful of his films are ever seen:
42nd Street
(33, Lloyd Bacon), in which he played the harassed director;
The Prisoner of Shark Island
(36, John Ford), his most agonized role, as the doctor imprisoned for setting John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg; and
The Road to Glory
(36, Howard Hawks), where he fitted admirably into the fatalistic picture of the First World War. In all three, he is a man under pressure, his character hardened by stress. But only a few years before, Baxter had won fame as a carefree, Fairbanksian bandit.

Baxter was a traveling salesman before he went into the theatre; and after a debut in
All Woman
(18, Hobart Henley), he played on Broadway in
Lombardi Ltd
. But he soon concentrated on movies and had a variety of supporting parts at different studios:
Her Own Money
(22, Joseph Henabery);
If I Were Queen
(22, Wesley Ruggles);
Blow Your Own Horn
(23, James W. Horne); and
Christine of the Hungry Heart
(24, George Archainbaud). Then Paramount signed him and he played in
The Female
(24, Sam Wood);
The Garden of Weeds
(24, James Cruze); and
The Golden Bed
(25, Cecil B. De Mille). He worked steadily without ever making stardom:
Welcome Home
(25, Cruze);
A Son of His Father
(25, Victor Fleming);
Mannequin
(26, Cruze);
Miss Brewster’s Millions
(26, Clarence Badger);
The Runaway
(26, William C. De Mille);
Aloma of the South Seas
(26, Maurice Tourneur); the title part in
The Great Gatsby
(26, Herbert Brenon);
Drums of the Desert
(27, John Waters);
The Tragedy of Youth
(28, Archainbaud); and
Three Sinners
(28, Rowland V. Lee).
Ramona
(28, Edwin Carewe) lifted him enormously and, after
Craig’s Wife
(28, W. C. De Mille),
Danger Street
(28, Ralph Ince), and
West of Zanzibar
(29, Tod Browning), he went to Fox to take over for the injured Raoul Walsh as the Cisco Kid in
In Old Arizona
(29, Irving Cummings). The loss of an eye settled Walsh as a director, and the Cisco Kid won Baxter the best actor Oscar.

Fox now treated him as a star, but few of his 1930s movies have lasted well: there was something subdued in Baxter, so that he often looked best in support of some other star—with Janet Gaynor in
Daddy Longlegs
(31, Alfred Santell), for instance. He also made
Behind that Curtain
(29, Cummings);
Romance of the Rio Grande
(29, Santell);
The Arizona Kid
(30, Santell);
Renegades
(30, Fleming);
Doctors’ Wives
(31, Frank Borzage);
The Squaw Man
(31, C. B. De Mille);
Surrender
(31, William K. Howard);
Six Hours to Live
(32, William Dieterle);
Dangerously Yours
(33, Frank Tuttle);
Penthouse
(33, W. S. Van Dyke);
Broadway Bill
(35, Frank Capra);
One More Spring
(35, Henry King);
Under the Pampas Moon
(35, James Tinling);
Robin Hood of El Dorado
(36, William Wellman);
To Mary—with Love
(36, John Cromwell);
White Hunter
(36, Cummings);
Slave Ship
(37, Tay Garnett); as Alan Breck Stewart in
Kidnapped
(38, Alfred Werker).

As his ratings slumped, he had leading parts in
Adam Had Four Sons
(41, Gregory Ratoff) and
Lady in the Dark
(44, Mitchell Leisen), but otherwise slipped into B pictures, including the dull Crime Doctor series.

Michael Bay
, b. 1965, Los Angeles
1995:
Bad Boys
. 1996:
The Rock
. 1998:
Armageddon
. 2001:
Pearl Harbor
. 2003:
Bad Boys II
. 2005:
The Island
. 2007:
Transformers
. 2009:
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
.

In the summer of 2001, there was a story going around Hollywood that Michael Bay was seriously depressed. No one wishes to be callous, but this could be the start of something useful. For in sharing a common, sad state of mind, is it possible that Mr. Bay will eventually come to recognize the natural materials of a narrative art—the lives of ordinary people? Or is it more likely that he will overcome passing melancholy and get on with a far more depleting mindscape—Hollywood thinking?

Still, it’s worth explaining the reason for Bay being at bay: he was dismayed at the nearly universal load of critical bombs that had been dropped on
Pearl Harbor
. In other words, something in his innocence had coincided with the provincialism of Los Angeles to persuade him that having finished that vast film, and set off all its explosions, why, surely he had made a thing called art. So, in the event that Mr. Bay is ever looking for help, I’ll spell it out here—he makes noisy garbage; it is his calling, his being and soul. There is no cure. We may respect his suffering, but we know this: ours is greater. And he has millions as medicine.

Nathalie Baye
(Judith Mesnil), b. Mainnerville, France, 1948
Baye didn’t make a film until she was twenty-five. She had trained and worked as a dancer first. But the delay helped, making her a bit more mature than most debut actresses. Which began to explain why she was not the prettiest you’ve ever seen. A character began to emerge, if only because she played a version of Truffaut’s maternal script girl, Helen Scott, in an early film,
Day for Night
(73).

She then made
La Gueule Ouverte
(74, Maurice Pialat);
La Gifle
(74, Claude Pinoteau);
Mado
(76, Claude Sautet);
The Man Who Loved Women
(77, Truffaut);
Monsieur Papa
(77, Philippe Monnier);
The Green Room
(78, Truffaut);
Mon Premier Amour
(78, Elie Chouraqui);
La Mémoire Courte
(79, Eduardo de Gregorio);
Every Man for Himself
(80, Jean-Luc Godard);
Je Vais Craquer!!!
(80, François Leterrier);
The Girl from Lorraine
(80, Claude Goretta);
A Week’s Vacation
(80, Bertrand Tavernier);
Beau-Père
(81, Bertrand Blier);
L’Ombre Rouge
(81, Jean-Louis Comolli);
La Balance
(82, Bob Swaim);
The Return of Martin Guerre
(82, Daniel Vigne);
J’ai Epousé une Ombre
(82, Robin Davis), a remake of
No Man of Her Own; Détective
(84, Godard);
Notre Histoire
(84, Blier);
Rive Droite, Rive Gauche
(84, Philippe Labro);
Beethoven’s Nephew
(85, Paul Morrissey);
Lune de Miel
(85, Patrick Jamain);
De Guerre Lasse
(87, Robert Enrico);
En Toute Innocence
(88, Alain Jessua);
La Baule-les-Pins
(90, Diane Kurys);
Un Weekend sur Deux
(90, Nicole Garcia);
The Man Inside
(90, Bobby Roth).

This extraordinary work rate has declined only a little, but she has worked more often for women directors:
La Voix
(92, Pierre Granier-Deferre);
And the Band Played On
(93, Roger Spottiswoode);
La Machine
(94, François Dupeyron); a voice on
Arabian Knights
(95, Richard Williams);
Enfants de Salaud
(96, Tonie Marshall);
Food of Love
(97, Stephen Poliakoff);
Paparazzi
(98, Alain Berberian);
Si Je T’Aime, Prends Garde à Toi
(99, Jeanne Labrunne);
Venus Beauty Salon
(99, Marshall);
A Pornographic Affair
(99, Frédéric Fonteyne);
Selon Matthieu
(00, Xavier Beauvais);
Ça Ira Mieux Demain
(00, Labrunne);
Absolument Fabuleux
(01, Gabriel Aghion).

She did
L’Enfant des Lumières
(02, Vigne) for French TV; came to Hollywood as the mother in
Catch Me if You Can
(02, Steven Spielberg);
La Fleur du Mal
(03, Claude Chabrol);
Les Sentiments
(03, Noémie Lvovsky);
France Boutique
(03, Marshall);
Une Vie à T’Attendre
(04, Thierry Klifa);
L’un Reste, l’Autre Part
(05, Claude Berri);
Le Petit Lieutenant
(06, Xavier Beauvois);
La Californie
(06, Jacques Fieschi);
Ne Le Dis à Personne
(06, Guillaume Canet);
Michou d’Auber
(07, Thomas Gilou);
Mon Fils à Moi
(07, Martial Fougeron);
La Prix à Payer
(07, Alexandra Leclère);
Passe-Passe
(08, Marshall).

André Bazin
(1918–58), b. Angers, France
Bazin would be exceptional if only because he is one of the few important writers on film for whom no one had an angry, or pained, word. He was so widely esteemed as a man. Jacques Rivette has called him “saintly.” Jean Renoir said that his work would outlast cinema itself. Robert Bresson observed how he “had a curious way of taking off from what was false to arrive ultimately at what was true.” And for François Truffaut, of course, Bazin was nothing less than a surrogate father, a friend and teacher bringing the wild child into being, and dying the day after shooting on
The 400 Blows
had begun (that film is dedicated to Bazin’s memory).

As a child, Bazin was moved from Angers to La Rochelle. He studied there and at Versailles, and in 1938 he entered the Ecole Normale Superieure at St. Cloud. His academic record was exceptional, but he was denied teaching credentials because of his stammer. So, in the war years, he joined the Maison de Lettres, a form of schooling for the working classes and for those whose education had been disrupted by war. He also founded a film club and showed many films banned by the Nazis. After 1944, he was made film critic on
Le Parisien Liberé;
he wrote for several other papers and magazines; he was made a teacher at IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques); and he founded, with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze,
Les Cahiers du Cinéma
. He wrote books about Orson Welles and Vittorio de Sica, and at his death (from leukemia) he was at work on a large book about Renoir. But he was also the author of a variety of essays and reviews that make a coherent definition of cinema.