Diane Baker

While she has worked through six decades, Diane Baker enjoyed her greatest success at the start of her acting career, from 1959-65.  She was a sweet-looking ingenue who blossomed into a swan as she aged.  Even her best years in films were spotty.  She tended to do better among large casts.  When she was (rarely) top-billed or even the leading lady to a male star, she and the films didn't fare so well.  I wonder why.

She was born in 1938 in Hollywood and didn't crave to be an actress despite the fact that her mother had been in some Marx Brothers movies.  Her father was a car salesman and she had two younger sisters.  At age eight she met California congresswoman Helen Gahagan and her husband, actor Melvyn Douglas and was so impressed with them that she said she might want to go into politics one day herself.  While that never happened she has always remained a highly political person.

When she turned 18 she entered the Miss Rheingold Contest.  She had to audition before actresses Irene Dunne, Joan Fontaine and Ida Lupino.  Having done some prior modeling may have provided her with the path to becoming one of six finalists.  They traveled around the country for the beer company and it was during this time she thought she might like to be an actress.

With the money she earned from the contest, she moved to New York, studying acting and ballet.  When her family asked her to come back home, she enrolled in a prestigious acting class in Los Angeles and as a result acquired a contract at 20th Century Fox.  She had only barely found her way around the immense property when she ran into director George (A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant) Stevens who was preparing The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). 

Stevens hired Baker to play Margot Frank.  At the same time she was introduced to Otto Frank, father of Margot and Anne, and the only member of the family to survive the holocaust.  He was so taken with Baker's uncanny resemblance to his daughter.  He invited Baker and Millie Perkins (Anne) up to his house where he regaled them with old family photos.

The Diary of Anne Frank was a huge success and although Baker didn't get the attention that Perkins and Shelley Winters (an Oscar winner as the mother) got, she was on her way.  Fox was pleased with her and poised to groom her for stardom.

They immediately put her into The Best of Everything (1959) about three young woman out to knock 'em dead in Manhattan's publishing world.  It is an highly entertaining soap opera which I reviewed in the last posting.

She played James Mason's daughter and Pat Boone 's romantic interest in Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).  But when the two men and Arlene Dahl shove off on their journey, Baker is left behind and out of the story.  The following year she had the lead in Tess of the Storm Country, which didn't do so well, and the hopelessly inane The Wizard of Baghdad which thankfully no one's ever heard of.

Very little is known about Baker's personal life although it would not be difficult to guess why she shut down any and all inquiries.  She would not cooperate with the Fox publicity department to put out all those sunny and often phony stories.  She was rarely available to participate in publicity junkets for her films or other Fox films.  Cheesecake photos were out as were any photos of who she might be seeing or articles on what she did in her spare time.

That was her right, of course, but she was in the wrong business to pull a Garbo.  Furthermore, with just a few films under her belt (and not all good ones), she was a little too new to the game to embrace the spirit of I vant to be alone.  Actually Garbo said she vanted to be left alone and it seems likely that's what Baker wanted as well.  The sad truth is... when an actor doesn't want to play ball with the studio, the studio doesn't play ball either.  Pretty simple.  Did she care?

With good buddy Melvyn Douglas

At this still early stage she began appearing on television and when one adds up all her performances over these many years, she has appeared far more as a television actress than a movie actress.

She joined up with another of her Anne Frank costars, Richard Beymer, for Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) where he plays Nick Adams, Hemingway's favorite alter-ego.  It's another of those all-star casts, but again, as the hero's girlfriend, when he goes off on those adventures, she stays home.

The 300 Spartans (1962) starring Richard Egan had some appeal but even though she was his love interest, how can she compete with 300 Spartans in such a testosterone-laden opus?  I very much liked Nine Hours to Rama (1963), the story of Ghandi's assassination, but it was not successful at the box office despite a riveting performance by Horst Buchholz.  Location filming in India awakened a sleeping giant in Baker and would help form later passions in her work and politics.

If Baker was signed to the standard seven-year contract with Fox, then they let her go early.  

She went over to MGM to make The Prize (1963), which arguably contains my favorite Baker performance although the lead female role went to Elke Sommer.  Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson star as Nobel Prize winners who become involved in various nefarious things including murder.  Baker plays a villainess as Robinson's niece, and a very lovely one at that.

As Susan Hayward's sister in Stolen Hours

She had a go as Susan Hayward's younger sister in Stolen Hours (1963), a remake of Bette Davis's Dark Victory, about a wealthy woman dying of brain cancer.  Baker lends fine support although she and Hayward look nothing alike.  The film was not a great success although tell that to Hayward fans.

Baker had an early connection with Joan Crawford that began when they costarred in The Best of Everything.  Crawford famously was rude to younger actresses on her films but for some reason she took a liking to Baker.  In 1964 the actresses made two more films together.  The first was a television pilot that didn't sell, Fatal Confinement.  It was repackaged, renamed Della and sold to the movies where it was seen by seven people and then hidden forevermore.

It was followed by one of Baker's most famous films, Strait-Jacket, in which she plays Crawford's daughter.  Crawford has just gotten out of prison for ax-murdering her cheating husband and soon the ax murders start again.  It is a cheapie B flick, the kind Crawford was unfortunately given to doing late in life, but I've always liked it.

As Joan Crawford's daughter in Strait-Jacket

Universal offered her a contract which she declined but she did hang out long enough to make two films for them.  The first was Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), the psychological story of a kleptomaniac and habitual liar.  She liked Hitchcock and enjoyed making the film but all the attention went to the stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery.

She loved making Mirage (1965) opposite Gregory Peck, a rare leading lady assignment for her, about a man suffering from amnesia who is afraid people are out to harm him.  She has said she adored Peck and talking with him about the arts and their liberal politics.

Television bought the groceries for years but in 1976 she returned to films to play Clint Walker's wife in the family drama, Baker's Hawk.  I quite enjoyed it, of course, but it failed to make much noise.

Around this time she began producing, something she had longed to do and ended up being most successful at it.  Some were shorts, one was a theatrical movie, also a TV movie and a series of after-school specials.

She had small roles in such big-screen successes as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Joy Luck Club (1993) and The Cable Guy and Courage Under Fire, both 1996.

She spent some years as the executive director of the School of Motion Pictures & Television and the School of Acting.  She also had a passion for the years she spent teaching acting at San Francisco's Academy of Art University, the nation's largest, private, accredited art and design school.  She has been busy indeed.

To me, she had just dropped out of sight.  And then once in awhile I would see her with her good buddy, TCM host Robert Osborne.  When he spoke of her, I sensed he was speaking of a loving friend.

Her early career was built around playing a sweet young thing and I've always believed that in 1959 she was coming to movies just as sweet young things and the movies they populated were no longer in vogue.  Through it all I saw a fire in her belly and have always hoped she'd latch onto a roll that would send her to the top but it never happened.  Her acting always pleased me.

She never married or had children.  Hollywood called her a bachelor girl.  Today, at 81, she still lives in Los Angeles.



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