Warner Baxter Explained

Warner Leroy Baxter (March 29, 1889 – May 7, 1951) was an American Academy Award-winning actor who is best known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona.

Baxter was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to San Francisco, California with his widowed mother in 1898, when he was nine. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he and his family lived in a tent for two weeks. By 1910 Baxter was in vaudeville, and from there began acting on the stage.

Baxter began his movie career as an extra in 1918 and quickly rose to become a star. He had his first starring role in 1921, in a film called Sheltered Daughters, and he quickly became one of the most popular actors of the decade. He starred in forty-eight features during the 1920s. His most famous starring role was as the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1929), the first all-talking western, for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor. He also starred in Grand Canary (1934), Broadway Bill (1934) and in Kidnapped (1938).

By 1936, Baxter was the highest paid actor in Hollywood, but by 1943, he had slipped to B-movie roles, and he starred in a series of Crime Doctor films for Columbia Pictures. Baxter made over a hundred films between 1914 and 1950. He was married to actress Winifred Bryson from 1918 to his death in 1951.

Suffering the pain of arthritis, Baxter had an ill-advised lobotomy to ease the pain. He died shortly after of pneumonia and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6290 Hollywood Boulevard.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
rowspan=1	1914	Her Own Money		uncredited
rowspan=1	1918	All Woman		uncredited
rowspan=1	1919	Lombardi, Ltd.		uncredited
rowspan=4	1921	First Love	Donald Halliday
Cheated Hearts	Tom Gordon
The Love Charm	Thomas Morgan
Sheltered Daughters	Pep Mullins
rowspan=5	1922	If I Were Queen	Vladimir
A Girl's Desire	Jones/Lord Dysart
The Ninety and Nine	Tom Silverton/Phil Bradbury
The Girl in His Room	Kirk Waring
Her Own Money	Lew Alden
rowspan=4	1923	St. Elmo	Murray Hammond
Blow Your Own Horn	Jack Dunbar
In Search of a Thrill	Adrian Torrens
Those Who Dance	Bob Kane
rowspan=5	1924	Christine of the Hungry Heart	Stuart Knight
The Female	Col. Valentia
His Forgotten Wife	Donald Allen/John Rolfe
Alimony	Jimmy Mason
The Garden of Weeds	Douglas Crawford
rowspan=8	1925	The Best People	Henry Morgan
A Son of His Father	Big Boy Morgan
Rugged Water	Calvin Horner
Welcome Home	Fred Prouty
The Awful Truth	Norman Satterlee
The Air Mail	Russ Kane
The Golden Bed	Bunny O'Neill
Mismates	Ted Carroll
rowspan=5	1926	Aloma of the South Seas	Nuitane
The Runaway	Wade Murrell
Mannequin	John Herrick
The Great Gatsby	Jay Gatsby	now a lost film
Miss Brewster's Millions	Thomas B. Hancock Jr
rowspan=5	1927	The Coward	Clinton Philbrook
Singed	Royce Wingate
Drums of the Desert	John Curry
The Telephone Girl	Matthew Standish
Craig's Wife	Walter Craig
rowspan=7	1928	Danger Street	Rolly Sigsby
Ramona	Alessandro
Three Sinners	James Harris
The Tragedy of Youth	Frank Gordon
West of Zanzibar	Doc	directed by Tod Browning
A Woman's Way	Tony
In Old Arizona	The Cisco Kid	Academy Award for Best Actor
rowspan=5	1929	Romance of the Rio Grande	Pablo Wharton Cameron
Behind That Curtain	Col. John Beetham
The Far Call
Thru Different Eyes	Jack Winfield
Linda	Dr. Paul Randall
rowspan=4	1930	Renegades	Deucalion
Such Men Are Dangerous	Ludwig Kranz
The Arizona Kid	The Cisco Kid
The Squaw Man	James 'Jim' Wingate, aka Jim Carston
rowspan=6	1931	Their Mad Moment	Esteban Cristera
Doctors' Wives	Dr. Judson Penning
The Stolen Jools	The Cisco Kid
Daddy Long Legs	Jervis Pendleton
The Cisco Kid	The Cisco Kid
Surrender	Sgt. Dumaine
rowspan=3	1932	Six Hours to Live	Capt. Paul Onslow
Man About Town	Stephen Morrow
Amateur Daddy	Jim Gladden
rowspan=5	1933	Dangerously Yours	Andrew Burke
42nd Street	Julian Marsh
I Loved You Wednesday	Philip Fletcher
Paddy the Next Best Thing	Lawrence Blake
Penthouse	Jackson 'Jack' Durant
rowspan=6	1934	Hell in the Heavens	Lt. Steve Warner
As Husbands Go	Charles Lingard
Grand Canary	Dr. Harvey Leith
Stand Up and Cheer!	Lawrence Cromwell
Such Women Are Dangerous	Michael Shawn
Broadway Bill	Dan Brooks
rowspan=3	1935	Under the Pampas Moon	Cesar Campo
One More Spring	Jaret Otkar
La Fiesta de Santa Barbara		Short film
rowspan=6	1936	White Hunter	Capt. Clark Rutledge
To Mary - with Love	Jack Wallace
The Road to Glory	Captain Paul La Roche
The Prisoner of Shark Island	Dr. Samuel Mudd
King of Burlesque	Kerry Bolton
The Robin Hood of El Dorado	Joaquin Murrieta
rowspan=3	1937	Wife, Doctor and Nurse	Dr. Judd Lewis
Vogues of 1938	George Curson
Slave Ship	Jim Lovett
rowspan=2	1938	I'll Give a Million	Tony Newlander
Kidnapped	Alan Breck
rowspan=3	1939	Barricade	Hank Topping
Wife, Husband and Friend	Leonard Borland aka Logan Bennett
Return of the Cisco Kid	The Cisco Kid
rowspan=1	1940	Earthbound	Nick Desborough
rowspan=1	1941	Adam Had Four Sons	Adam Stoddard
rowspan=2	1943	Crime Doctor	Dr. Robert Ordway, formerly Phil Morgan	first of 10 films in the Crime Doctor B-film series
Crime Doctor's Strangest Case	Dr. Robert Ordway
rowspan=2	1944	Shadows in the Night	Dr. Robert Ordway
Lady in the Dark	Kendall Nesbitt
rowspan=2	1945	Crime Doctor's Warning	Dr. Robert Ordway
The Crime Doctor's Courage	Dr. Robert Ordway
rowspan=2	1946	Crime Doctor's Man Hunt	Dr. Robert Ordway
Just Before Dawn	Dr. Robert Ordway
rowspan=2	1947	Crime Doctor's Gamble	Dr. Robert Ordway
The Millerson Case	Dr. Robert Ordway
rowspan=1	1948	The Gentleman From Nowhere	Earl Donovan/Robert Ashton
rowspan=3	1949	The Crime Doctor's Diary	Dr. Robert Ordway	last of the Crime Doctor series
The Devil's Henchman	Jess Arno
Prison Warden	Warden Victor Burnell
rowspan=1	1950	State Penitentiary	Rodger Manners
rowspan=1	1952	O. Henry's Full House		clip of Baxter from The Cisco Kid External links Photographs of Warner Baxter