Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1943)

About Ann I WAS a problem child. I used to have tantrums. If there was something difficult or unpleasant for me to do, I was horrid and couldn't be made to do it unless my parents gave me a reason why. It irked Mother, and no wonder, so I was taken to a psychiatrist. I was seven at the time. He asked me dozens of questions, but, true to form, I would not answer them. The analyst then left me alone in a room with a dictaphone hoping that I would talk to myself and thus yield up my complexes and neuroses. I kept mum. The poor man couldn't get anywhere with me and told Mother I had "outsmarted" him. But the experience, seemingly fruitless, was to do something for me. It made me want to know myself. The idea didn't formulate at the age of seven, of course, but as the years went by I kept remembering all that questioning and probing and determined that I would try the same method on myself. I have tried and, although there are a few loose ends, I feel that, in the main, I know pretty much what I am all about; what I like, and why; what I want, and why; how I function best, and why. I like to be independent. I wouldn't be a clinging vine to the sturdiest oak that grows. This is because, when I was a youngster, my parents often said to me, "Whatever you do is all right with us, but you have to do it well and make a living at it." This was fine with me because, as the granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, the daughter of my mother, a brilliant, enterprising woman, and of my father, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, manager of the Frankfort Distilleries, I was conditioned to people who were functional as well as gifted. So the idea that I could be anything I wanted to be, but could not dabble at it, grew with me. As a child, I could always entertain myself. This was partly because we moved quite a lot. Born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923 (astrologers, please note), my parents moved to Rye, New York, when I was four; B V MYSELF What happens when a girl turns informer on herself? Plenty — especially when she's a surprise-surprise gal like Anne Baxter! to White Plains a few years later; then to Chappaqua; and finally, to Bronxville, where their home is now. As a consequence, I skipped about from school to school. I never was really alone because I knew, with my first conscious thought, that I wanted to be an actress. So I was constantly imagining myself as some character I'd read about in a book or seen on the stage, surrounded by all the other characters in the book or play. And they were my friends and playmates. ■ STILL like to be alone and am living • alone, for the first time in my life, in Hollywood. Being on your own stiffens your fibre. One of the greatest satisfactions in life is to take yourself by the scruff of your neck and say, "Do it now!" — knowing that there is no one else to make you. I think I have found out that I have a sense of humor. Which means that nothing can ever hurt me — too much. Know what I do when I am alone at night? I never want to go to bed. So I stay up until four o'clock in the morning, lie on the floor in front of the fire and listen to all the music that's played, from the newest modern things to Fourteenth Century church music. "Escapist" stuff? Of course. I am escaping from going to bed, which means the loss of consciously lived hours to me. And as music opens many doors, I escape from being sucked into too great an absorption in my work which, would be limiting. In fact, my most important conclusion about myself is that I am quite tiresomely normal. As proof thereof, I submit the following data as it pops into my head: I love clothes and adore jewels. I don't have to wear jewels. I feel no need to possess them but I love to look at them. I love big rings, have a heartshaped ring, a black heart, which is my favorite, and hate little ones. I'm mad about emeralds, my birthstone. I'd like to have a mink coat. Healthily feminine, this, I hope? I love color. Vivid color ofany kind, red, cyclamen, magenta. I love gold gauze curtains with the sun flooding through and have them in my house. I love humorous books. Sally Benson; Dorothy Parker; the "New Yorker" magazine. On the other hand, having a reasonable amount of intellectual curiosity, I try to keep myself informed on current events. I am interested in war strategy, child psychology, music and languages and can hold a fairly decent own on quite a range of subjects. I love poetry, too. I'm crazy about Edna St. Vincent Millay and like Carl Sandburg better than Whitman. In fact, Sandburg's "Primer Lesson" is my favorite poem. "Be careful how you use proud words" — so true. I like Robert Donat and Jean Gabin. The first day (Continued on page 105) 55