All About Eve (1950) belonged to Bette Davis, who played aging Broadway great Margo Channing, but what about Eve? That was Anne Baxter (1923-1985), who may have been an Oscar winner for The Razor’s Edge (1946), but she never achieved Davis-like stature. Bailey, who has written widely on Hollywood’s golden age, seeks to give Baxter her due, seeing in her life “a captivating story of heartbreak and triumph just waiting to be fully told.” Baxter was born in La Porte, Indiana, with the double advantages of beauty and privilege—triple advantages, if one includes being the granddaughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. She made her first movie at 17 and, in Bailey’s telling, had all the acting work she wanted going forward. The principal “heartbreak” of which Bailey writes concerned a dud marriage that found Baxter spending almost four years in the Australian Outback, after which she apparently picked up her acting career where she’d left it. To gather insights about her subject, Bailey turned to Baxter’s bestselling 1976 memoir Intermission and consulted Baxter’s daughters and surviving colleagues. While everything here is of interest, it’s pushing it to call Baxter’s story “a deeply profound life story that carries resonance far beyond [her] years in the limelight,” as the author has it. Bailey’s acceptance of her subject’s self-advertised indomitability seems to preclude any consideration that Baxter may have been masking professional anxieties. Did she worry that aging would mean fewer jobs (see Margo Channing, above)? Did she feel that making appearances on TV’s The Love Boat was a step back? Bailey’s reluctance to inquire gives this authorized book a sanitized feel, although this makes Baxter no less worthy a biographical subject.