Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

Cover Personality Anne Baxter I have often wondered what sort of hidden treasure is sought by those nebulous but all important Hollywood people who are called Talent Scouts. On occasions it has seemed as if the Talent Scouts were really a wolf pack, men dedicated to the conviction that what defines a woman is the long low whistle she evokes in a certain type of man. Their discerning eye has found for the public heroes who beat their women and seductive sirens without any brains. But sometimes they rise above the secondary sex characters and find us an actress. This is what happened with Anne Baxter in 1939. The boys reallv found an actress. Controlled Emotion If you saw her in All / Ibout Eve you must remember her, and to be remembered when you play opposite Bette Davis is only possible for an actress indeed. Miss Davis has a wonderful set of emotions. She seems to have the emotions of all the women you have ever known. She is feline, luxuriant, unstable, kind hearted, unbalanced, loving and spiteful with hardly a pause between. Her emotionailv charged intelligence gives her a royal canvas, and she gives you a vivid and flamboyant perfcimance in that picture of the Snares that wait for spoiled career women. With cold rutlilessuess Miss Baxter gives the complementary portrait. In her case it is all done with intelligently controlled emotion. As time goes on you loathe her more and more ; she is selfishness coming out of solution, crystallising at just the right moment in the film. The timing, intelligence and realism of her performance is completely convincing. Only afterwards you realise that no woman could be as spiteful, relentless and unscrupulous as that. She picked up an Academy Award in 1946 for her performance in The Razor’s Edge. She was also the sweet young woman in Sunday Dinner for a Soldier. For those who like snippets about their stars, it can be said that she will be twenty-eight next May and weighs just under a cwt. She will also be worth her weight in gold to any good director whose horizons are wider than those of the Talent Scouts. Her Versatility She loves music — good swing, such French moderns as Debussy and Ravel ; Sibelius, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Gershwin. She is also interested in art. Her favourites cover a wide range such as Gaugliin, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Her favourite modern authors are John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe and Thornton Wilder. She likes to swim and ride horseback in a western saddle. Her hobby is food. She likes not only to collect but execute rare recipes. She spends her spare time searching out good and unusual places in which to eat. She has another hobby too, if it can be classed as such — the practically lost art of walking, particularly where she can see and study various types of people. She is married to John Hodiak, who was her co-star in Sunday Dinner for a Soldier. Michael Antony.