Editing Warner Baxter (section)

==Personal life==
Baxter married Viola Caldwell in 1911, but they were soon separated and then divorced in 1913. He married actress [[Winifred Bryson]] in 1918, remaining married until his death in 1951.<ref name="mh1">{{cite news|title=Warner Baxter, 62, Star Of Motion Pictures, Dies|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/8886234/the_morning_herald/|work=The Morning Herald|agency=Associated Press|date=May 8, 1951|location=Maryland, Hagerstown|page=1|via = Newspapers.com|access-date = February 11, 2017}} {{Open access}}</ref> Through his marriage to Bryson he was an uncle by marriage to actress Betty Bryson.<ref>Santa Rosa Republican, April 6, 1934, pg. 4.</ref> Betty Bryson was born Elizabeth Bryson Meikklejohn, daughter of Winifred's sister, Vivian.

On August 5, 1931, Baxter survived uninjured with 40 other cast and crew members the train derailment of the Southern Pacific Argonaut east of Yuma on route to Tucson for location shooting for ''[[The Cisco Kid (1931 film)|The Cisco Kid]]''. Two trainmen were killed in the derailment. Baxter, Conchita Montenegro, and Edmund Lowe were among the passengers in cars at the end of the train.<ref>Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1931, pg 1</ref>

The Baxter beach house was at 77 Malibu Beach, Malibu, California, for many years as noted in its 1942 voter roll.<ref>California Voter Registrations 1900 - 1968; Ancestry.com.</ref> He also had a cabin in the San Jacinto Mountains.<ref>Oakland Tribune, December 30, 1934, Sunday Supplement pgs. 62-63.</ref> He was very active in Malibu civic affairs and was named honorary mayor of Malibu from 1946, replacing Brian Donlevy, through 1949.<ref>Santa Monica History Museum, Photo Archives, The Malibu Times, August 20, 1946, Vol.1,#17,pg.1.</ref> For a number of years, he had an 80-acre working ranch about 12 miles north of Palm Springs at Desert Hot Springs, the Warner Baxter Ranch, later renamed the Circle B Ranch. It was used for years as a location for western films.<ref>The Desert Sun, February 9, 1962, pg. 18.</ref> It was listed for sale in mid 1945 for a price of $40,000 and sold over a year later.<ref>The Desert Sun, April 13, 1945, pg. 5.</ref><ref>The Desert  Sun, August 9, 1946, pg. 6.</ref> 

During the war, Baxter was chairman of the Malibu Rationing Board and also did some troop entertaining in Army camps in the Fresno and Bakersfield areas. He and his entertainers put on dozens of day and night shows for the service men.<ref>Topanga Journal (Topanga, California) July 23, 1943, pg. 1.</ref>

Baxter was a close friend of [[William Powell]], with whom he had starred in three silent films, the best of which was ''[[The Great Gatsby (1926 film)|The Great Gatsby]]'' now considered lost. He was at Powell's side when [[Jean Harlow]] died in 1937.<ref name="things"/> His friendship with [[Ronald Colman]] was perhaps even deeper. While tennis and the film industry were the origins of their friendship going back to their earlier days at Paramount Studios, Colman and his wife Benita Hume named Baxter and [[Tim McCoy]] as godfathers to their daughter Juliet Benita Colman at her christening in 1944.<ref>[[Ronald Colman]], A Very Private Person, Juliet Benita Colman, William Morrow and Company, New York 1975, pg. 215.</ref> Juliet Colman's biography of her father describes in detail the very private social circle of cocktails, dinner and games of tennis or poker held between her father's Hollywood house at 2092 Mound Street above and behind the Castle Argyle, and Baxter's home on South Beachwood Drive.

When not acting, Baxter was an inventor who co-created a searchlight for revolvers in 1935, which allowed a shooter to more clearly see a target at night. He also developed a radio device that allowed emergency crews to change traffic signals from two blocks away, providing them with safe passage through intersections. He financed the device's installation at a Beverly Hills intersection in 1940.<ref name="things" />