Carroll Baker

This article is about the American actress. For the Canadian country music performer, see Carroll Baker (singer).

Carroll Baker
File:Baker, Carroll - Macro - Harlow - 65.jpg Baker as Harlow (1965)
Born	(1931-05-28) May 28, 1931 Johnstown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1953–2003
Spouse(s)	Louie Ritter ​ (m. 1953⁠–⁠1953)​ Jack Garfein ​ (m. 1955⁠–⁠1969)​ 2 children Donald Burton ​ (m. 1978⁠–⁠2007)​ (his death)
Children	Blanche Baker (b. 1956) Herschel Garfein (b. 1958)

Carroll Baker (born May 28, 1931) is an American film, stage and television actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and as a movie sex symbol. Cast in a wide range of roles during her heyday in the 1960s, Baker was especially memorable playing brash, flamboyant women, thanks to her beautiful features, striking blonde hair, and distinctive Southern drawl. Her star turn came in Elia Kazan's controversial Baby Doll (1956), for which she received an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe.

Other notable early roles included Giant (1956) alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean; But Not for Me (1959) with Clark Gable; and How the West Was Won (1962). In the late 1960s, Baker moved to Italy and starred in a multitude of Italian films, namely horror and giallo films directed by Umberto Lenzi and other genre directors. She returned to American cinema with Andy Warhol's Bad (1977), and later had supporting roles in the '90s films Kindergarten Cop (1990) and David Fincher's The Game (1997).

Early life

Baker was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a Roman Catholic family, the daughter of Virginia (née Duffy) and William Watson Baker, who was a traveling salesman. Baker's parents separated when she was eight years old, when she moved with her mother and younger sister, Virginia, to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

Baker attended high school in Greensburg, and then moved with her family to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she attended St. Pete Junior College. After spending a year in college, she began working as a magician's assistant as well as joining a dance company. In 1951, Baker moved to New York City and studied acting under Lee Strasberg, eventually becoming part of the famed Actors Studio, where she was an acquaintance of Marilyn Monroe and became good friends with James Dean.

Career

Early career

File:Baby Doll shot.jpg

Baker in Baby Doll with Eli Wallach (1956)

Baker began her film career in 1953, with a small part in Easy to Love. After appearing in television commercials, she took a role in the Broadway production of All Summer Long. That appearance brought her to the attention of director Elia Kazan, who cast Baker as the title character in his controversial 1956 Baby Doll, a role initially assigned to Marilyn Monroe. Her Tennessee Williams-scripted role as a Mississippi teenage bride to a failed middle-aged cotton gin owner brought Baker instant fame as well as a certain level of notoriety. Baby Doll would remain the film for which she is best remembered; she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for it. Two months prior to Baby Doll's release, she appeared in the supporting role of Luz Benedict II in Giant, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean. According to Baker, in addition to Baby Doll, she had been offered numerous leading parts in feature films but chose to debut in a supporting role in Giant because she was "insecure" and "wanted to start out a little less 'profile'".

as Harlow (1965)

Baker would go on to work steadily in films throughout the late fifties and early sixties, appearing in a variety of genres: romances, such as The Miracle co-starring a young Roger Moore and But Not for Me (both 1959); westerns, including The Big Country (1958) and a lead role in the epic How the West Was Won (1962); and steamy melodramas, including the controversial independent film Something Wild (1961), directed by her then-husband Jack Garfein, in which she plays a rape victim; and Station Six-Sahara (1962). Baker was also chosen by MGM for the lead in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but her contract with Warner Brothers prevented her from accepting the role, which ultimately went to Elizabeth Taylor.

While Baker was on location in Africa for the 1965 movie Mister Moses, a story now considered apocryphal had it that a Maasai chief offered 150 cows, 200 goats, sheep, and $750 for her hand in marriage. She subsequently appeared with Maasai warriors on the cover of Life's 1964 issue. While filming Mister Moses, notorious false rumors spread that she and co-star Robert Mitchum were having an affair, though Baker confirmed that Shirley MacLaine regularly visited him on the set of the film. In addition to film acting, Baker also found time to appear again on Broadway, starring in the 1962 production of Garson Kanin's Come on Strong.

Baker's portrayal of a Jean Harlow-type movie star in the 1964 hit The Carpetbaggers brought her a second wave of notoriety. The film was the top moneymaker of that year, with domestic box-office receipts of $13,000,000 and marked the beginning of a tumultuous relationship with the film's producer, Joseph E. Levine. Based on her Carpetbaggers performance, Levine began to develop Baker as a movie sex symbol, casting her in the title roles of two 1965 potboilers, Sylvia and Harlow. Despite much pre-publicity, the latter film was not a success, and relations between Baker and Levine soured.

European career

Following a protracted legal battle with Paramount Pictures and divorce from her second husband, Jack Garfein, Baker moved to Europe after what she described as being "blackballed in Hollywood". Eventually settling in Italy, Baker became fluent in Italian and would spend the next several years starring in hard-edged giallo thrillers and horror films. Her credits in these films included Her Harem (1967), The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), Paranoia (1969), So Sweet... So Perverse (1969), A Quiet Place to Kill (1970), and The Devil Has Seven Faces (1971). Baker starred in multiple films by director Umberto Lenzi during this era, most notably the aforementioned Paranoia, where she played a wealthy widow tormented and exploited by two siblings. She followed her roles in Lenzi's films with a leading role in Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga (1973) as the titular witch. In those years, film locations would take her all around the world, including Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Mexico.

A lead role in Andy Warhol's Bad (1977) marked her first American production of the decade. She followed Bad with a part in The Sky Is Falling (1979) with Dennis Hopper, playing a washed-up actress living among expatriates in a Spanish village. The seventies also saw a return to the stage, where she appeared in British productions of Bell, Book, and Candle; Rain, Lucy Crown, and Motive, though she spent the majority of the decade starring in numerous Italian movies. In 1978, while touring England and Ireland in productions of Motive, Baker met her third husband, stage actor Donald Burton.

Later career

By the eighties, Baker had largely become a character actor. She starred in the 1980 Walt Disney-produced horror film, The Watcher in the Woods, alongside Bette Davis and played the mother of Dorothy Stratten in Star 80 (1983). She also had a starring role as Jack Nicholson's wife in Ironweed (1987), along with Meryl Streep.

In 1990, she played a villainess in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Kindergarten Cop, which she filmed in Oregon, and later appeared in a supporting role alongside Michael Douglas in David Fincher's acclaimed 1997 thriller The Game. Her film and television work continued sporadically through the nineties, and she acted in many made-for-television movies, including the true crime story Judgment Day: The John List Story (1993), and Dalva (1996) with Farrah Fawcett.

The 2006 DVD release of Baby Doll includes a documentary featuring Baker reflecting on the film's impact on her career. Baker has also been featured in documentaries about several of her co-stars, including Clark Gable, Roger Moore, Sal Mineo, and James Dean, including the 1975 James Dean: The First American Teenager, and a 1985 BBC Radio 2 tribute marking the 30th anniversary of the actor's death. Also she appeared in the documentary Cinerama Adventure.

Baker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1725 Vine Street. In 2001, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was also dedicated to her.

Writing

In 1983, Baker published an autobiography entitled Baby Doll: An Autobiography, detailing her life and career as an actress and revealing the issues with Warner Bros. Pictures that led her to move to Europe in the 1970s and pursue a career in Italian films. The book was well received. She later wrote two other books, To Africa with Love, detailing her time spent in Africa, and a novel entitled A Roman Tale. Her memories of James Dean at the Actors Studio and later in Giant were recalled on BBC Radio 2 in 1982 when she guested on You're Tearing Me Apart, Terence Pettigrew's documentary which commemmorated the 25th anniversary of Dean's death in a car accident in 1955. Also on the programme were singer-actor Adam Faith and the screenwriter Ray Connolly.

Personal life

Baker has been married three times. Her first marriage, to furrier Louie Ritter, ended in 1954 before she enrolled in the Actors Studio. Her second was to director Jack Garfein, a Holocaust survivor she met at the Studio and for whom she converted to Judaism (having been raised a Catholic). They had one daughter, Blanche Baker, born in 1956, and a son, Herschel Garfein, born in 1958. Garfein and Baker divorced in 1969.

Baker married her third husband, British theater actor Donald Burton, on March 10, 1978, and resided in Hampstead, London, in the 1980s. The couple remained together until Burton's death from emphysema at their home in Cathedral City, California, on December 8, 2007.

Filmography

Features

Film
Year	Film	Role	Notes
1953	Easy to Love	Clarice
1956	Giant	Luz Benedict II
	Baby Doll	Baby Doll Meighan	Won - Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer (female)* *shared with Jayne Mansfield and Natalie Wood Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated - BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress
1958	The Big Country	Patricia Terrill
1959	But Not for Me	Ellie Brown/Borden
	The Miracle	Teresa
1961	Bridge to the Sun	Gwen Terasaki
	Something Wild	Mary Ann Robinson
1962	How the West Was Won	Eve Prescott
	Station Six-Sahara	Catherine
1964	The Carpetbaggers	Rina Marlowe Cord	Golden Laurel — Dramatic Performance, Female (2nd place)
	Cheyenne Autumn	Deborah Wright
1965	Sylvia	Sylvia: West (Karoki, Kay, Carlyle)
	The Greatest Story Ever Told	Veronica
	Mister Moses	Julie Anderson
	Harlow	Jean Harlow
1967	Her Harem	Margherita
	Jack of Diamonds	Herself
1968	The Sweet Body of Deborah	Deborah
1969	Paranoia	Kathryn West	also known as: Orgasmo
	So Sweet... So Perverse	Nicole Perrier
1970	A Quiet Place to Kill	Helen	also known as: Paranoia
1971	The Fourth Mrs. Anderson	Julie Spencer/Lillian Martin	also known as: Death at the Deep End of the Swimming Pool
	Captain Apache	Maude	also known as: Deathwork
	The Devil Has Seven Faces	Julie Harrison/Mary Harrison
1972	Knife of Ice	Martha Caldwell	also known as: Silent Horror
1973	Baba Yaga	Baba Yaga	also known as: Baba Yaga, Devil Witch, and Kiss Me, Kill Me
1974	The Flower with the Deadly Sting	Evelyn
	The Body	Madeleine
1975	Private Lessons	Laura Formenti
	At Last, at Last	Lucia
1976	As of Tomorrow	Polly Pott
	My Father's Wife	Laura
	Bait	Carol
1977	Andy Warhol's Bad	Hazel Aiken	also known as: Bad
1978	Cyclone	Sheila
1979	The World Is Full of Married Men	Linda Cooper
	The Sky Is Falling	Treasure
1980	The Watcher in the Woods	Helen Curtis
1983	Star 80	Dorothy's Mother
	Red Monarch	Brown
1984	The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud	Mama Freud
1985	Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil	Gerda Hoffman	TV movie
	What Mad Pursuit?	Louise Steinhauser	TV movie
1986	Native Son	Mrs. Dalton
1987	On Fire	Maureen	TV movie
	Ironweed	Annie Phelan
1990	Kindergarten Cop	Eleanor Crisp
1991	Blonde Fist	Lovelle Summers
1992	Gipsy Angel
	Jackpot	Madame	also known as: Cyber Eden
1993	Judgment Day: The John List Story	Alma List	TV movie
	Men Don't Tell	Ruth	TV movie
	A Kiss to Die For	Mrs. Graham	TV movie
1995	In the Flesh	Elaine Mitchelson
1996	Dalva	Naomi	TV movie
	Witness Run	Martha Shepard	TV movie
	Just Your Luck	Momie
1997	The Game	Ilsa
	Heart Full of Rain	Edith Pearl Dockett	TV movie
1998	Nowhere to Go	Nana
2000	Another Woman's Husband	Laurel's Mom	TV movie
2002	Rag and Bone	Sister Marie, Tony's Aunt	TV movie
	Cinerama Adventure	Herself	documentary

Short subjects

• Flashes Festival (1965)
• The Spider (1970)

Stage credits

On Broadway

• Escapade, as Molly (Nov. 1953)
• All Summer Long, as Ruth (Sep. 1954- Nov. 1954)
• Come on Strong, as Virginia Karger (Sep. 1960- Oct. 1960)

Other

• Rain (1977)
• Bell, Book and Candle (1978)
• Motive (1978)

External links

• Carroll Baker at IMDb
• Carroll Baker at the Internet Broadway Database
• Carroll Baker at AllMovie