Keith Baxter, who played Prince Hal opposite Orson Welles’ Sir John Falstaff in the stage and film versions of Chimes at Midnight, has died. He was 90.
Britain’s The Telegraph reported this week that Baxter died from a heart attack while swimming during a vacation in Corsica, France, on September 24, 2023. He is survived by his husband, Brian Holden.
A classically-trained actor, director and playwright, Baxter – born Keith Stanley Baxter-Wright – was the son of a captain in the Merchant Navy and schooled in his Welsh hometown of Newport, Monmouthshire. Baxter studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in the early 1950s.
Baxter made his film debut in the 1957 remake of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Three years later, he was cast in the role of Prince Hal in Welles’ Irish stage production of Chimes at Midnight. At the time, Welles told him Baxter he intended to make a film version and wanted him to reprise the role of Hal.
During the 50th anniversary of the film’s release in 2015, Baxter penned an article for Wellesnet recalling his experience on the set:
We arrived in a ruined church in Andorra early in the morning, and broke for lunch outdoors when Welles and (John) Gielgud swapped hilarious anecdotes before Welles climbed on the table and fell asleep. When he woke we filmed until it was dark. One actor, newly arrived from England, complained that these were not Trade Union hours and everyone looked at him as if he were insane.
Welles was the captain of the ship of course. When we moved to Madrid he was able to live at home with his beautiful Italian wife, Paola, and his little daughter, Beatrice whom he adored. He had a real family life – created by Paola – and he was very happy.
As the film progressed, and he began to work on the movieola cutting and shaping it, he said to me one day that it had taken a life of its own. “Films do that you know.” The film was becoming deeper and more sombre than he had originally planned. “Too late to change it now.”
When it was finished the emotional impact of the story was more powerful than anyone could have expected. The terrible similarity.
As the years went by one saw the disillusion that took over Welles’s life. He had longed to return to California – like Falstaff at the end of the film, he believed he would be wanted again. He wasn’t. He lived a life of increasing unhappiness surrounded by second-rate ‘friends’ who did nothing to help him.
I think of Orson in Spain, laughing in the way that only he could laugh, the room shaking; I think of him with Paola and Beatrice grinning and buoyant. That is how I remember him. A wonderful loveable man. And a genius.
Baxter was tentatively cast by Welles in early incarnation of The Other Side of the Wind, then called The Sacred Beasts. The early abortive version, which would have centered around a diabolical macho director playing dangerous physical and psychological games during filming with his star (Anthony Perkins) and his potential replacement, a young bullfighter (an actual matador, Aurelio Ninez). Baxter, playing the screenwriter, is hired in the film because he wrote a play called The Matador (the director not realizing that is the name of the setting, a gay bar in Soho), and Jeanne Moreau, as a model who is the director’s lover, witness the director’s cruel machinations with increasing disenchantment and horror. Finally the Perkins character takes the director on a fatal drive that for both men represents the culmination of suicidal despair. Not a fan of The Other Side of the Wind shot in the early 1970s by Welles, Baxter referred to The Sacred Beasts as “the better film that will never be made” in a 2015 conversation with film historian and author Joseph McBride.
Baxter won a Theatre World Award for his debut Broadway performance as King Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons in 1962. His subsequent classic roles included both Octavius and Marc Antony in different productions of Antony and Cleopatra. In 1971, he was awarded a Drama Desk Award for his tour-de-force turn as Milo Tindle in Sleuth. His film credits included Additional film credits included Ash Wednesday, Golden Rendezvous and Killing Time.
Baxter wrote about his career in his engaging 1999 memoir entitled My Sentiments Exactly.
On Instagram, Beatrice Welles posted several photos of Baxter and described him as “the last of my dearest friends.” He was a wonderful friend of my father’s, he adored my mother and they were the closest of friends. And me? Well, I have known Keith since I was 4 and he was an amazing /teacher/guide and best of friends of mine. For many years now, we talked once a month, in fact, I was thinking about him this morning and that it was that time I should call him.”
________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.