In 1956, her performance in the coveted role of Nefretiri (“beautiful companion” in Egyptian) in Commandments was panned in Variety, as “close to the old-school siren histrionics,” but The New York Times said that it was “unquestionably apt and complementary to a lusty and melodramatic romance.” Baxter said that she “loved slinking around – really, this was silent film acting but with dialogue.”
#THE TEN COMMANDMENTS MOVIE QUOTES PROFESSIONAL#
Baxter based her performance on her own understudy from her first professional play, who had once bitchily threatened to “finish her off.”
Baxter got an Oscar nod but no statue as understudy Eve Harrington, nemesis of Broadway idol Margo Channing played by Davis. Then, after appearing with William Holden, Clark Gable, and Gregory Peck, she was cast in the 1950 All About Eve starring Bette Davis. In 1946, her role in The Razor’s Edge won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She became popular in World War II pictures as “the idealized girl next door,” getting, as she said, “almost as much mail as Betty Grable.” The teen-ager’s first film was the 1940 20 Mule Team with Wallace Beery and her career blossomed quickly. Baxter, after all, had only studied with the Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya, who had worked with Konstantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre. Supposedly Hepburn didn’t like Baxter’s acting style, which, perhaps, wasn’t theatrical enough for Hepburn. In 1939, Baxter was cast as Dinah Lord, Katherine Hepburn’s kid sister in The Philadelphia Story, but was replaced during the pre-Broadway run. Three years later, she played her first Broadway role in the comedy Seen But Not Heard. After the family moved to New York, Anne saw Helen Hayes in Mary of Scotland in1933 and decided she would become an actress. Queen Anne would have turned 95 this year.īorn on in Michigan City, Indiana, Anne Baxter was the daughter of Kenneth Baxter and Catherine Wright, herself a daughter of Welsh-American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments, “The Greatest Event in Motion Picture History” (at least up through 1956).Īlthough Anne Baxter felt miscast as Nefretiri, because of her delicate features (DeMille said “No” to a putty nose), she did enjoy watching the marathon movie on TV, of which she said: “Nefretiri ruled the glamor arena some 3,200 years ago, and it’s surprising how much the ladies of that day knew about the art of stalking a man.” Oh, that movie queen on holiday TV! Every year since 1973 at Easter/Passover time on ABC-TV, Queen Anne Baxter Nefretiri falls for Charlton Heston’s Moses but marries Yul Brynner’s Pharaoh on the rebound, and demands revenge in Cecil B. Bring it back to me, stained with his blood! He spurned me like a strumpet in the street.
Nefretiri: Oh, Moses, Moses, why of all men did I fall in love with a prince of fools?….