Warner Baxter

'Warner Baxter' (qv) claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent." When he was age 9, his widowed mother moved to San Francisco where, following the earthquake of 1906, his family lived in a tent for two weeks "in mortal terror of the fire." By 1910 he was in vaudeville and from there went on to Broadway plays and movies. A matinée idol in the silents, he came to prominence as the Cisco Kid with _In Old Arizona (1928)_ (qv), for which he won an Oscar. He went on to star with 'Myrna Loy' (qv) in _Penthouse (1933)_ (qv) and to what many consider his best role, that of the doctor who treated 'Abraham Lincoln' (qv)'s assassin, in _The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)_ (qv). That year his $284,000 income topped the industry. In 1943, after slipping into a string of B-pictures, he began his Dr. Ordway "Crime Doctor" series with _Crime Doctor (1943)_ (qv). He had suffered a nervous breakdown, and these pictures were easy on him (studio sets for one month, two films a year). Following a lobotomy to relieve pains of arthritis, he died of pneumonia.::Ed Stephan <[email protected]> (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)