Talking Screen (Sep-Oct 1930)

MATTER Believe it or not, Warner really can play the guitar and this is not just a publicity pose. And he didn't learn it by six easy lessons, either. Like many another actor, Warner's acting career was checked at one time by his mother. But the lure of the stage M'on out. Ain't it the truth, Mr. Baxter? When a feller finally succeeds, there are always a lot of guys who say that it's an accident. Who speak about luck. The breaks. It's been that way with Warner Baxter. And on the face of the facts the envious seem justified. But its never safe to be guided by circumstantial evidence. And when you delve a little in Baxter's past, it seems to me that he has been constantly and consistently preparing himself for the success that would surely come one day. WARNER is thirty-six or so now. He's been acting for twenty-six of those years. Perhaps, if his Dad had lived, the old man would have larruped it out of him. But Warner's father died when was a bit of a baby. His mother raised him. You know how mothers are. Of course she objected even after he became a farm implement salesman. Then along came one of those breaks the boys talk about. The male half of Dorothy Shoemaker's act was taken ill, and Dorothy was supposed to open in Louisville at Monday matinee. This was on a Saturday. Some pal of Warner's tipped him off. He got the job. Rehearsed the songs and business on Sunday. And on Monday the show went on. But Ma Baxter raised such a hullabaloo that Warner quit the aa and returned to that dear Columbus, Ohio — the town built behind the Amicon Fruit Company — just to keep peace in the family. Maybe Mrs. Baxter was right about Warner being flighty. Anyway, he didn't stick very long at his new job with the Insurance Company, and he did go and get himself married to a girl from Philadelphia. Then, to top everything, he shoots the financial works on a garage in Oklahoma. Imagine trying to sell oil and gas in Tulsa! Like bringing a ham sandwich to a banquet. Or your wife to the Follies. The whole works blew up in a dozen weeks — including the until-death-do-us-part paa. And Warner batted around the country playing stock in Dallas, getting all of $30 a week as a juvenile lead, hooking up with Oliver Morosco, reaching the Coast,, trying to crash pictures, and failing. All this took seven years. It seemed longer. THEN one break led to another. Warner was sent East to play a bit in the Morosco production, Lombardi, Ltd. Meantime, back in Hollywood, he had been writing his sonnets to a dark lady who was featured in the cast, and who numbered none other than Edmund {Sergeant Quirt) Lowe among her more ardent admirers. Quite some handicaps for Baxter, you'll agree, not forgetting that the judge had not yet unlocked the Philadelphia handcuffs. But none of these things kept Warner from speaking his piece. And he did so to such good purpose, that somehow or other things arranged themselves so that Winifred Bryson, that was her name, appeared on Broadway in the same company which \_Continued on page 9 '^^ to all the tom-foolery of acting. Put there wasn't much ^1 e could do about it. So Warner played in amateur sho-vs and prep school dramatics, and continued to monkey around the theatre Here is the statuette presented to him by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the best performance in any picture during 1929. His work in In Old Arizona won it. •Qififiiiili 33