CAUSE: Bates died, aged 69, in a London hospital of a stroke after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Ralph Bates
Born February 12, 1940
Died March 27, 1991
Hammer horror star. Born in Bristol, Bates made his stage début in 1963 at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, and joined various repertory companies. He appeared in several Hammer films including Horror Of Frankenstein (1970), Lust For A Vampire (1970) and Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971). On television he appeared in Poldark but gained more fame as John Lacey, the cuckolded teacher who joins a lonely hearts club, in the hit BBC sitcom Dear John. His wife, Virginia Wetherill, and daughter, Daisy, are also actresses.
CAUSE: Bates died of cancer aged 51. Dear John was cancelled by the BBC when it was discovered it was cheaper to buy an American version. Bates’ family blamed the stress of losing his job for the cancer that killed him.
Greg Bautzer
Born April 3, 1911
Died October 26, 1987
The real-life Arnie Becker. Raised in San Pedro, Gregson Bautzer was “tall and husky, with soulful dark eyes, a tanned complexion and a flashy smile” – perfect for his profession, that of a lawyer who plied his trade with some of Hollywood’s most glamorous leading ladies. One day his life story will make a great book and film. Bautzer attended the University of Southern California Law School and, after war service in the navy, he began a law practice with Bentley Ryan. In 1937 he was dating blonde bombshell Lana Turner, who lost her virginity to him. Of the latter, Turner has said, “I was awkward. I had no idea how to move or what to do. The act itself hurt like hell, and I must confess I didn’t enjoy it at all. I didn’t even know what an orgasm was. But I loved being close to Greg.” Not long afterwards he took up with Joan Crawford after she called Lana to her house and asked her to finish with Bautzer. That affair quickly fizzled out and he moved on to romances with Merle Oberon and Sonja Henie. By 1946 he was ready for a rematch with Crawford but she ignored his calls. He travelled down to where she was staying in Palm Springs and booked into the same hotel, La Quinta, where he continued his wooing. Eventually, his persistence paid off and they began seeing each other. She presented him with a black convertible Cadillac as a token of her love and, no doubt, lust. As well as womanising, Bautzer liked boozing (often until he couldn’t stand) and gambling, usually together. One night after a heavy session he ended up wrecking a mailbox and lamppost on Wilshire Boulevard and his drink-driving resulted in front page coverage. Crawford was horrified by the adverse publicity and dumped him. He retaliated by seeing old flame Merle Oberon and Crawford went off with Steve Crane, who was previously married to Lana Turner … whose first love had been Bautzer. A week later, Bautzer and Crawford were once again an item. Crawford liked rough sex and Bautzer was only too happy to oblige. On one occasion he went too far and blacked her eye – but she didn’t seem to mind. He related, “I still have four scars on my face which she put there. She could throw a cocktail glass across the room and hit you in the face, two times out of three.” In 1946 Bautzer lost several front teeth in a fight with cowboy actor Don ‘Red’ Barry (b. Houston, Texas, January 11, 1911, as Donald Barry d’Acosta, d. North Hollywood, California, July 17, 1980, by his own hand) defending the honour of Crawford. That was probably more than she ever did to defend it herself, although she did pay for his reconstructive dentistry. In February 1947 he had lunch two days on the trot with Rita Hayworth, so Crawford was seen out with English actor Peter Shaw (who went on to marry Angela Lansbury). Shaw even went so far as to discuss marriage to Crawford with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. However, in March 1947 Crawford was back with Bautzer. Their on-off affair was to last for ten years. He said, “A night with Joan was better than a year with ten others.” One time Bautzer fell asleep in Joan’s private cinema and she insisted all the guests left him there, locking the door. The next morning Bautzer woke up, cooked himself some breakfast in the small diner attached, broke a window to get out and went home. A furious Crawford later rang him: “How dare you leave my home without washing the dishes?” she raged. On another occasion he irritated Joan when playing baseball with her son Christopher. She had told the boy to throw right-handed and call Bautzer ‘Uncle Greg’. When she saw the boy doing neither she reprimanded first him and then Bautzer. The lawyer apologised, but Crawford wanted more. “If you’re really sorry, you’ll kneel in front of me.” Bautzer thought she was joking, but Crawford was deadly serious. “I’m not kidding. If you were truly sorry, you’d kneel. Franchot [Tone] always did.” Bautzer refused but later asked Tone if Joan had told him the truth. He replied that she had. Through Crawford Bautzer enlarged his client base. He represented Ingrid Bergman, John Garfield, Joseph Schenck, Jerry Wald, Jane Wyman and Ginger Rogers. In October 1949 Crawford and Bautzer attended an event in honour of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. At the party Bautzer danced with Ginger Rogers all night, to Joan’s fury. Her revenge was swift. Driving home at 1.30am that night, she stopped the car and asked Bautzer to check the right rear tyre. As soon as he got out of the vehicle she drove off, leaving him stranded. He walked the three miles home to the Bel-Air hotel and this time did not call Crawford to make up as he had done so often in the past. Instead, he began seeing Ginger Rogers. By January 1951 he was dating Jane Wyman, recently separated from Ronald Reagan. He also squired 5́ 2˝ blonde actress Terry Moore, who may have been married to Howard Hughes, for whom Bautzer was personal attorney. When the bashful billionaire saw Elizabeth Taylor, he decided he wanted her. He sent Bautzer to Taylor with a proposal of marriage and an incentive payment of $1 million. (Hughes never got to bed Taylor.) Later that year, Bautzer was back with Crawford. During one row he tore off a pair of diamond cufflinks (worth $10,000) that she gave him and in her temper she flushed them down the toilet. Realising the folly of her actions she forbade anyone to use any of the conveniences until a plumber could be called. He charged her $500 for retrieving them. On the way home, Bautzer wrote off the black Cadillac Crawford had given him. In autumn 1952 they co-hosted a special party for Noël Coward, who commented of Bautzer: “Too many teeth.” Following another fight Crawford turned up unexpectedly at his law office on Hollywood Boulevard demanding to see her lover. Bautzer had instructed his secretary to tell Crawford he was out. The movie star ignored the amanuensis and burst into the office. She looked under his desk, in his cupboards, behind the curtains and even in his private lavatory. No Bautzer. She stormed out, puzzling the secretary, who knew that Bautzer was in there somewhere. She found him on a narrow window ledge 12 storeys up. Single past 40, Bautzer finally made a trip up the altar and married British actress Dana Wynter (b. 1927).
CAUSE: He died of a heart attack aged 76. He was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park, 1218 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles 90024.
Anne Baxter
Born May 7, 1923
Died December 12, 1985
Posh actress. Many stars have rags-to-riches stories. Anne Baxter had a riches-to-riches story. She was born in Michigan City, Indiana, the granddaughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the only child of Kenneth Stuart Baxter, a top-flight executive in the Seagram Distillery company. It was seeing Helen Hayes that made the 10-year-old Anne Baxter decide an actor’s life was for her. She attended Theodora Irvine’s School of the Theater, where she studied under Madame Maria Ouspenskaya. She made her Broadway début on September 17, 1936, at the Henry Miller Theater as Elizabeth Winthrop in Seen But Not Heard. When she was 16 Baxter screen-tested for the role of Rebecca in the film of the same name, losing out to Joan Fontaine. However, bosses at Fox were so impressed by her that they offered her a contract. Baxter stayed there for 13 years but made her film début on loan out to MGM in Wallace Beery’s 20 Mule Team (1940) playing Joan Johnson. By the time she graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1941 she had appeared in substantive roles in four films. Her other movies included The Great Profile as Mary Maxwell, Swamp Water as Julie, Charley’s Aunt (1941) as Amy Spettigue, The Pied Piper as Nicole Ro
ugeron, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) as Lucy Morgan, Five Graves To Cairo (1943) as Mouche, Crash Dive (1943) as Jean Hewlett and Sunday Dinner For A Soldier (1944) playing Tessa Osborne. It was during the shoot for the latter that she met actor John Hodiak (b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 16, 1914, d. Tarzana, California, October 19, 1955 from a coronary thrombosis) and they married at her parents’ home in Burlinghame, California, on July 7, 1946. Their daughter, Katrina, was born on July 9, 1951. They were divorced in Los Angeles on January 27, 1953. During their marriage Baxter appeared in the two films that were to garner her Oscar nominations. She won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of the alcoholic Sophie in The Razor’s Edge (1946). Up to that time Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck believed Baxter was only suitable for mousy parts, such as that of a librarian. Fashion guru Mr Blackwell commented, “Her hair looks as if someone ran a brush through it and then thought ‘Oh the hell with it’.” She appeared in Blaze Of Noon (1947) as Lucille Stewart, Yellow Sky (1948) as Mike, The Walls Of Jericho (1948) as Julia Norman, Homecoming (1948) as Penny Johnson, A Ticket To Tomahawk (1950) as Kit Dodge, Jr, and Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950), which earned her a Best Actress nomination. (Strangely, years later she replaced Lauren Bacall in the musical version, Applause, and played Margo Channing, the Bette Davis role. Later still, when Davis was forced to drop out of the TV soap Hotel through illness, Baxter took the lead.) Her career post-Eve was disappointing. She appeared in O. Henry’s Full House (1952) as Joanna (the third time she and Marilyn Monroe appeared in the same film), My Wife’s Best Friend (1952) as Virginia Mason, Bedevilled (1955) as Monica Johnson, One Desire as Tacey Cromwell, Three Violent People (1956) as Lorna Hunter Saunders, The Ten Commandments as Nefretiri and Cimarron (1960) as Dixie Lee. She married land developer Randolph Galt on February 18, 1960, in Honolulu. They had two daughters: Melissa (b. October 5, 1961) and Maginal (b. March 11, 1963). The first three years of the marriage were spent in the Australian bush, but it became too much for Baxter and she was divorced on the grounds of irreconcilable differences on January 29, 1970. By this time she was appearing more and more on the small screen and less and less on the big one. On January 30, 1977, she married the much older Wall Street banker David Klee. He died ten months later in New York City on October 15, 1977, aged 70.
CAUSE: Baxter died following a brain haemorrhage in New York aged 62.
Warner Baxter
Born March 29, 1889
Died May 7, 1951
Prolific diva. Born in Columbus, Ohio, 5́ 11˝ Warner Leroy Baxter moved to San Francisco in 1898 with his widowed mother. Following the April 18, 1906 earthquake the family lived in a tent for a fortnight. He became part-owner of a garage before he took to the stage in 1910 and then Hollywood. He appeared in numerous forgettable silents including All Woman (1918), Lombardi, Ltd (1919), Sheltered Daughters (1921) as Pep Mullins, The Love Charm (1921) as Thomas Morgan, First Love (1921) as Donald Halliday, Cheated Hearts (1921) as Tom Gordon, Her Own Money (1922) as Lew Alden, The Girl In His Room (1922) as Kirk Waring, A Girl’s Desire as Jones/Lord Dysart, If I Were Queen (1922) as Vladimir, The Ninety And Nine (1922) as Tom Silverton/Phil Bradbury, St Elmo (1923) as Murray Hammond, Blow Your Own Horn as Jack Dunbar, In Search Of A Thrill (1923) as Adrian Torrens, Alimony (1924) as Jimmy Mason, His Forgotten Wife (1924) as Donald Allen/John Rolfe, Those Who Dance as Bob Kane, The Female as Colonel Valentia, Christine Of The Hungry Heart (1924) as Stuart Knight, The Garden Of Weeds (1924) as Douglas Crawford, The Golden Bed as Bunny O’Neill, The Air Mail (1925) as Russ Kane, The Awful Truth as Norman Slatterley, Welcome Home (1925) as Fred Prouty, Rugged Water (1925) as Calvin Horner, A Son Of His Father (1925) as Big Boy Morgan, The Best People (1925) as Henry Morgan, The Runaway (1926) as Wade Murrell, Mannequin (1926) as John Herrick, Miss Brewster’s Millions as Thomas B. Hancock, Jr, Aloma Of The South Seas (1926) as Nuitane, Mismates (1926) as Ted Carroll, The Great Gatsby (1926) as Jay Gatsby, The Telephone Girl (1927) as Matthew Standish, Drums Of The Desert (1927) as John Curry, The Coward (1927) as Clinton Philbrook and Singed (1927) as Royce Wingate. For In Old Arizona (1929), he became known for playing the Cisco Kid, a performance that won him a Best Actor Oscar on April 30, 1930 – beating off the talents of George Bancroft, Chester Morris, Paul Muni and Lewis Stone. The occasion overwhelmed Baxter and he forgot his “thank you” speech. His win was all the more remarkable because Baxter was not even supposed to be in the film. In Old Arizona was the first Western talkie and the original star and director was intended to be Raoul Walsh but while driving back from the location in Utah a jackrabbit jumped through his windscreen and blinded him in his right eye. Walsh pulled out and was replaced in front of the camera by Baxter and behind by Irving Cummings. In Old Arizona, based on a short story by O. Henry, was also unusual in that a third of the film was shot indoors because of difficulties with portable sound equipment. Baxter reprised his role as the Cisco Kid in The Arizona Kid (1930), The Slippery Pearls (1931), The Cisco Kid (1931) and Return Of The Cisco Kid (1939). As in modern times an Oscar win increased the pay packet of an actor and Baxter became one of the highest paid stars of the Thirties, earning $284,000 a year. Baxter was also, in modern parlance, a diva – his on-screen persona was a mask for his unpleasant, argumentative personality. He guarded his privacy as enthusiastically as Garbo. Following his performance as Adam Stoddard opposite Ingrid Bergman in Gregory Ratoff’s frankly awful Adam Had Four Sons (1941) he suffered a nervous breakdown and took almost three years to recover. He spent much of that time in the South Seas hunting buried pirate treasure but came home without any booty. He returned to the screen in the 10-film Columbia series Crime Doctor based on Max Marcin’s successful wireless series. Baxter played amnesia victim and former gang leader Phil Morgan who becomes Robert Ordway, America’s leading criminal psychologist. The films were Crime Doctor (1943), Crime Doctor’s Strangest Case (1943), Shadows In The Night (1944), The Crime Doctor’s Courage (1945), Crime Doctor’s Warning (1945), Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt (1946), Just Before Dawn (1946), The Millerson Case (1947), Crime Doctor’s Gamble (1947) and The Crime Doctor’s Diary (1949). It was a light load requiring just eight weeks of work a year. His other films included: Three Sinners (1928) as James Harris, A Woman’s Way (1928) as Tony, The Tragedy Of Youth (1928) as Frank Gordon, Ramona (1928) as Alessandro, Danger Street (1928) as Rolly Sigsby, Craig’s Wife (1928) as Walter Craig, West Of Zanzibar (1928) as Doc, Linda (1929) as Dr Paul Randall, Thru Different Eyes (1929) as Jack Winfield, The Far Call (1929), Behind That Curtain (1929) as Colonel John Beetham, Romance Of The Rio Grande (1929) as Pablo Wharton Cameron, Such Men Are Dangerous (1930) as Ludwig Kranz, Renegades as Deucalion, Doctors’ Wives as Dr Judson Penning, Daddy Long Legs (1931) as Jervis Pendleton, Their Mad Moment (1931) as Esteban Cristera, The Squaw Man (1931) as James Wingate, Surrender (1931) as Sergeant Dumaine, Amateur Daddy as Jim Gladden, Man About Town (1932) as Stephen Morrow, Six Hours To Live (1932) as Captain Paul Onslow, 42nd Street (1933) as Julian Marsh, Dangerously Yours (1933) as Andrew Burke, I Loved You Wednesday as Philip Fletcher, Paddy The Next Best Thing (1933) as Lawrence Blake, Penthouse (1933) as Jackson Durant, As Husbands Go (1934) as Charles Lingard, Stand Up And Cheer! as Lawrence Cromwell, Such Women Are Dangerous (1934) as Michael Shawn, Grand Canary (1934) as Dr Harvey Leith, Broadway Bill as Dan Brooks, Hell In The Heavens (1934) as Lieutenant Steve Warner, King Of Burlesque (1935) as Kerry Bolton, One More Spring (1935) as Jaret Otkar, Under The Pampas Moon as Cesar Campo, White Hunter as Captain Clark Rutledge, The Prisoner Of Shark Island (1936) as Dr Samuel Mudd, The Robin Hood Of El Dorado (1936) as Joaquin Murrieta, The Road To Glory (1936) as Captain Paul La Roche, To Mary – With Love as Jack Wallace, Vogues Of 1938 as George Curson, Slave Ship (1937) as Jim Lovett, Wife, Doctor And Nurse (1937) as Dr Judd Lewis, Kidnapped (1938) as Alan Breck, I’ll Give A Million (1938) as Tony Newlander, Wife, Husband And Friend (1939) as Leonard Borland, Barricade as Hank Topping, Earthbound as Nick Desborough, Lady In The Dark (1944) as
Kendall Nesbitt, The Gentleman From Nowhere (1948) as Earl Donovan/Robert Ashton, The Devil’s Henchmen (1949) as Jess Arno, Prison Warden (1949) as Warden Victor Burnell and State Penitentiary (1950) as Roger Manners. He married Viola Caldwell in 1909 but they separated after just seven months. On January 29, 1918, he married the actor Winifred Bryson who was his leading lady in The Awful Truth (1925).
CAUSE: Warner Baxter suffered from arthritis and had a lobotomy to ease his pain. He contracted pneumonia following surgery and died in Beverly Hills, California, aged 62. He was buried in Westwood Cemetery, Glendale, California.
Sir Cecil Beaton
Born January 14, 1904
Died January 18, 1980
Jack of all trades. Born at 21 Langland Gardens, Hampstead, north London, at 11.30am the eldest of four children of a timber merchant, Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was a photographer who was much in demand during five decades of the twentieth century. Educated at Harrow and St John’s College, Cambridge, he was the official photographer at the wedding of the Duke of Windsor to Mrs Simpson on June 3, 1937. Also in the Thirties he began working in the theatre, designing revues for Sir C.B. Cochran. After World War II he created designs for opera, ballet, film and the theatre. In 1948 he worked on the films An Ideal Husband and Anna Karenina. Eight years later, he designed the costumes for My Fair Lady. Two years after that he won the first of his two Oscars for Gigi (1958), followed up by the film version of My Fair Lady (1964). He never married. Although predominantly homosexual, Beaton had a four-month affair with actress Greta Garbo at the end of 1947 and beginning of 1948 and even proposed marriage to her.
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