Carroll Baker On Not Being Hollywood’s ‘Baby Doll’ 63 Years Later

Carroll Baker is an actress who has yet to receive her due. One of the last stars to come out of the world of Method acting that birthed legends like James Dean and Marlon Brando, Baker set the world on fire with her performance as ‘Baby Doll’ Meehan in Elia Kazan’s 1956 feature Baby Doll. From there she went on to star in iconic projects like Something Wild (1961) and How the West Was Won (1962). Now, she’s a prominent author living in New York. Her latest book, an Agatha Christie-inspired tome entitled Who Killed Big Al? is on shelves now and excited Baker during our recent phone conversation. Baker is set to return to the role that made her famous, talking about Baby Doll for Film Forum’s upcoming screening on December 11th. Baker sat down prior to the screen to talk about her novel, her career, and how Hollywood couldn’t handle her.

You just published your fourth book! 

Carroll Baker: A friend of mine called me up and said, “I'm never going to have dinner with you again.” I said, “Oh, why?” He said, “I just read your book. You know all kinds of poisons, poison berries and poison. You have poisons dropping off trees.” And I said, “Yes, but that's Agatha Christie. She did all the research and I just copied down all the poisons.”

Well it is an honor to get to talk to you.

Another thing that is important about me is the fact that, for example, a big film like How the West was Won... out of all those wonderful stars I'm the only one alive now that Debbie [Reynolds] is gone. It’s terrible; I don't have any friends.

One of your first your first films was in an Esther Williams movie [Easy to Love] and I am a huge Esther fan so I was so shocked that I did not know that.

Actually, I kept that secret. That was before I studied acting or anything. I wasn't too bad at it but George Stevens introduced me in Giant (1956) and that was a big thing. So I just simply ignored this [Easy to Love].

Do you remember the the audition process for breaking into Hollywood at that time?

I was very lucky because I was accepted at the Actors Studio. This is when I first wanted to act. So I had taken Lee Strasberg’s private classes and by the way, one of my classmates became very, very famous: Mike Nichols. I don't know why he was in this beginning class because he was so much more advanced than anybody. You could see how funny he was; how talented he was. Some years later, certainly before he passed away, I met him at a party. I felt we were friends. And he said to me, “Have you never wondered why I didn't cast you in any of my films?” My mouth dropped open. I mean, I never followed that. I never thought “Oh, that part would have been good for me.”

I couldn't say anything. He said to me, “You know why?” I said, “No, Mike Why?” He said, “Because when we were in class together you refused to do a scene with me.” I thought about that afterwards and I know why. He was so advanced and so strong. I knew that if I did a scene with him it would be everything he wanted me to do and I was just learning. I wanted to do things for myself. So I picked a guy in the class who was very weak. I was the one who directed the scenes and told him what to do. I should have told Mike that but I think maybe he he thought I turned him down because of his looks or something.

How did your work with Strasberg transition you into Hollywood?

I auditioned twice for the Actors Studio. The second time I got in. The studio was a magic name at that time. It’s still around but it it isn't what it used to be. It's different. They had had the big success with Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint. They heard that I was young and I was pretty and I was accepted as the Actors Studio, so that must mean I could act. Lots of directors from Hollywood wanted me to work with them. I did one or two screen tests and I wasn't happy because I didn't understand the lingo. I didn't understand what they wanted, what I should do, and so I turned it down. I said to Lee Strasberg, “Lee, I'm getting a bit concerned because so many people from Hollywood are coming to me. They want me to work for them and I don't feel that I've studied enough. I don't feel that I'm ready. But on the other hand, I know these people won't keep coming to me forever if I keep turning him down.” He said to me, “Carroll, what you do is you choose a great director and put yourself in his hands.” And that's why I did Giant.

What was Giant like to do as your first breakout role? How did you handle the pressure?

The great thing about a good director is they cast you in a part because you're absolutely right for that part and then they let you do your thing. They don't try to do the performance for you, and George Stevens was like that. I knew that if I went overboard, if I did something that wasn't quite right, he would correct me. It was the same way with [Elia] Kazan. He was a great actors director and he would sometimes say “a little more, a little less,” but he wouldn't say more than that and he reveled in the fact that you brought a character to life.

You didn’t immediately blow up after Giant?

No, no. I had to sign up with Warner Bros. and I was a bit overwhelmed by Baby Doll because nobody interviewed me when I was on Giant even though I was also under contract at Warner's and press were coming on the set. The Warner Bros. girl would always say, “Oh, why don't you talk to our new girl Carroll Baker?” But look here was Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. Nobody wanted to know about any new girl.

So the first real experience I had with the press was on a Sunday morning and, as it happens, Giant took so long to cut; George always takes a very long time. It was a very long movie too. It happened in New York. Both films were opening within one week of one another, Giant and Baby Doll. So I got a call, and I'm not very good in the morning, and this guy talks so fast. He said, “This is so-and-so from the AP. Your film has just been condemned by the Legion of Decency. This morning Cardinal Spellman stood up in St. Patrick's Cathedral and condemned the film. What have you got to say?” So that was my introduction into interviews.

Well and the Legion of Decency ultimately doomed Baby Doll here in the U.S. 

It didn't get a fair shake in this country. It did worldwide but when the Catholics banned it distributors and movie theater owners were afraid to to run it. It lost 90% of the bookings in America! We were all so shocked and so hurt but if you look at the movie I still can't believe some of those performances [and] on the top of it all was Tennessee Williams and this was his only original screenplay. I hate to say it be remade but the fact that they they haven't talked about this, that they they haven't forgiven whatever was wrong with the film, that they haven't brought it back...Tennessee Williams is such a master.

They did a play in London and they used the Baby Doll movie script. The girl was a little too old and the swing scene which was so popular with with the critics, they had the guy and the girl on opposite sides of the stage saying those lines like “you make me so nervous.” It really works even though they don’t touch one another because his dialogue is so powerful and it's very funny. But once you say it's condemned everybody stops looking at it says, “There must be something wrong here.” For example, Life magazine did a pre-production story on us, which was wonderful, about how the film was shot in the South and everything. Very positive. Once the church condemned it they came back with another article. All the pictures were dark and they were trying to insinuate that sex was going on.

What was the audition process like for Baby Doll itself?  

Kazan knew me from the Actors Studio and he loved to discover new people, have new faces in roles. The studio was empty. It was just he and I and Tennessee. I did a scene for them and when it was over Kazan smiled and said, “That is really good.” And Tennessee said, “Well, that's not quite the way I see the character. Maybe if she could put on 20 pounds and we could put patches of rouge on her cheeks.” Kazan turned him and said, “Tennessee, you already write bizarre characters. Let me put a real human being on-screen! We don't have to exaggerate it.”

What was it like to read the script for the first time?

Everybody's dream was to work with Kazan and a Tennessee Williams script. What was I gonna say? I was flabbergasted. I was [also] worried because this was such a special character. What was I going to do? So it was Kazan who took us all, took the cast to Mississippi, and we were there for three to four weeks before the film shot. He wanted us to envelop all the people in the town around us. He didn't want them to think that this was something suspicious. All the small parts, they're not from the Screen Actors Guild; they're local people there, and they loved it. He made them part of the film.

I was invited to different dinner parties because Kazan asked that I be invited, and one of the first questions I asked was “I find the name Baby Doll very strange.” People would stop me and say, “Oh, my cousin Alex, we always call her baby doll.” And somebody else said, “We had a pet cow that we just loved and she was our baby doll.” That brought it to life for me. The fact that it wasn't just a bizarre character. This was a real meaningful name in the south of Mississippi. And then with a with a Southern accent; I wasn't just copying what you hear on TV. I met a woman; she was an older woman and she had the the southern talk, but she lisped a little bit, and it was also baby talk. So I thought, ‘that's it. A southern accent with a bit of baby talk’ and that's what my accent became.

Your character is really a rebel in that movie.

She was sincere. I love the scene where they take the furniture and it just came to me at the last minute. They're picking up my chairs, taking away my furniture, and I had that purse on the string and I start hitting the guys. It wouldn't hurt them but it shows how angry she is. It goes towards the story because her daddy gave her to Archie Lee [Karl Malden’s character], but he wasn't allowed to consummate the marriage until she turned 19. So it drove him mad. She was trying to find every excuse not to go through with that promise and one of the things was the five rooms of furniture; “You promised my daddy you would give me five rooms of furniture.”

What was it like working with Karl Malden and Eli Wallach?

They really represent pure acting and they were both from the studio. But I also thought Mildred Dunnock was wonderful as Aunt Rose Comfort. I can't imagine anybody else being able to play that part. She was so wonderful and, yes, from the studio. They already had lots of jobs so I looked up to them. It was just a dream come true.

Was there a pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way?

Joe Levine was a newcomer in films and he thought he was Mike Todd. He saw me at the Paris Ball or something and he came up to me and he offered me Rina Marlowe [in The Carpetbaggers, 1964]. So, yes, of course, I was going to do it. I had turned down anything that was going to cast me as just a sex pot and that was very difficult. I wasn't just this little sexy girl from the South. I knew Harold Robbins; I read the book and I enjoyed the book very much and I loved the character.

After Baby Doll, Warner Bros. bought all the Erskine Caldwell books. He did all these little sexy Southern things and there was one film. I can't remember the actress now who did it. I wasn't allowed to see it, but I went to see it anyway. She was crawling up to this guy because she was hungry and he had food. You got the impression that she was she was going to lay down for him. At the age of I saw it I didn't get anything out of it. I just saw it was kind of weird that she was crawling. They wanted to cash in on the image and all the publicity of Baby Doll. Nobody knew me and they were writing about me saying ‘she is a little girl from the South.’ They didn't believe that I was an actress doing that part.

I was making $750 a week. I was turning down everything and then Warner Bros. wasn't paying me. It was hard for me because I wanted to work, but I didn't want to do a poor imitation of Baby Doll. I was on suspension for I don't know how long, how many months. Finally, Jack Warner's son-in-law, Bill Orr, who was a wonderful guy, came to me and said, “Listen, Carroll, nobody understands you. You've been on suspension for months. There's a project that you will not be able to turn down.” I said, “Great. What?” He said, “You're going to play a nun.” How much further from Baby Doll can you get than a nun? So when I did The Miracle (1959) I didn't read the script. They just told me it was going to be a nun. I wasn't really a nun; I was a postulate for three minutes of movie time when Roger Moore came riding by on a white stallion, and he was so handsome and he had a Red Army uniform on and that was it. She left the convent. She went all over the world and had affairs with everybody. There was nobody that she didn't have an affair with. She became the biggest tart that lived in New York City.

How did that set you up for working in the 1960s?

Everybody talked about how sexy I was in The Carpetbaggers. Unfortunately, Joe Levine was not just the producer of The Carpetbaggers, but he was a part of my contract. I was under contract to not just to Paramount but Paramount/Levine. I had a difficult time with him. He and I were in dispute and that put me in dispute with Paramount so I left Hollywood and went to New York because I had to work.

Was leaving Hollywood hard on you?

The thought of leaving was very difficult at first because I had two young children, they were seven and eight. What helped was I started seeing a lot of European films and I love them; Hiroshima mon amour and so many other great films. Every year the Venice Film Festival used to invite a big star from Hollywood to be the guest of honor and they invited me and that gave me a new life. After all these fights with Joe Levine and Paramount and being blackballed in Hollywood, the fact that they gave me this great honor...from that I got my first Italian movie [1967’s Her Harem], so it was easy. It was an easy transition which I thought was going to be difficult, but in the end, I got such love and wonderful feelings from the Italians [that] it was just great for me.

Can you talk about being blackballed by Hollywood?

It was just Joe Levine and I coming to loggerheads. He really wore me out. I did publicity day and night, and day and night. It was more work than doing the films. He just wanted to promote, promote, promote. There were there were days when I got so tired [that] I used to just go into a corner and cry. I didn't know what to do. When it came to a point where I said to him, ‘you've got to take it easy on me’ he turned against me.

What was Oscar night in 1957 like when you were nominated for Baby Doll?  

They used to do it on both coasts. The two nominees who were in New York where myself and Anna Magnani. There was nobody I loved more than Anna Magnani. I worshiped her because she was so great. So when they didn't call my name it was okay because they didn't call my favorite actress’ name either!

How is it to honor Baby Doll 63 years later at the Film Forum?  

I was at the Film Forum a couple months back because there was a release film of mine that seemed to be lost and somebody found a print of it. It was my second favorite film after Baby Doll called Station Six-Sahara (1963). I love that movie so much. They got a hold of it at the Film Forum and I called up and said, “My God, I've got to be there.” They were thrilled. I was saying to the audience that I loved Baby Doll and thought it had been unfairly treated and should be brought back and the guy in charge said, “Okay, we're going to bring it back” and they set a date.

Is there a director you wished you had worked with?

I'm sorry I never got to work with Martin Scorsese. I don't know if he's still working. I don't know what's going on with him.

Who Killed Big Al? is available for purchase

Information on the Film Forum’s Baby Doll screening