Frank C. Baxter

Born in Newbold, New Jersey, and served in the Army Medical Corps during the final year of World War I. Baxter attended the University of Pennsylvania he had financed himself with scholarships and university jobs through undergraduate (1926) and master’s degrees (1928). Shortly before departing for England and Cambridge University in 1928, he married Lydia Morris, who had been his student at the University of Pennsylvania. Baxter completed his Cambridge doctorate in English literature in 1932, two years after he had begun teaching at USC.[2]

Baxter is best remembered for his appearances from 1956–1962 as "Dr. Research" in the Bell System Science Series of television specials. These films became a staple in American classrooms from the 1960s through the 1980s. The Bell System Science Series combined scientific footage, live actors and animation to convey scientific concepts and history in a lively, entertaining way; and the bald, bespectacled and affable Baxter served as narrator, lecturer and host. These films made Baxter (who was not a scientist) something of a scientific icon among baby boomers. Several of Baxter's science films have been released on DVD.[3]

Baxter also appeared (as himself) in a prologue to the 1956 film The Mole People, in which he gave a brief history of theories of life beneath the surface of the earth.[4]

In 1966, Baxter hosted a popular TV series called The Four Winds to Adventure, featuring filmmakers exploring little-known areas of the world, whether across continents, oceans, or local people and animals in a particular region.

Baxter died in 1982 in Pasadena, California; he was 85.[5] His body was cremated, but his ashes were scattered in Colorado, not placed in a vault in California as some sources maintain.

In 1959, Baxter won the inaugural Golden Gavel award of Toastmasters International.[6] Baxter has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1960, he won the Southland Emmy Award as Outstanding Male Personality for his work at KRCA-TV in Los Angeles, California.[7]

Except as noted, this filmography is based on the credits listed at the Internet Movie Database.[8]

• Shakespeare on TV (television series - 1953)[9]
• The Mole People (1956)
• The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (TV series) - a 1956 episode titled The Shakespeare Paper
• Our Mr. Sun (1956)
• Hemo the Magnificent (1957)
• Telephone Time (host for 28 episodes of a weekly television series - 1957,1958)
• The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957)
• Meteora: The Unchained Goddess (1958)
• Gateways to the Mind (1958)
• The Alphabet Conspiracy (1959)
• Thread of Life (1960)
• An Age of Kings (commentary for a 1961 Shakespeare series)[10]
• About Time (1962)
• Four Winds to Adventure (host for 39 episodes of a weekly television series - 1966)

• Templeton, David (September 23–29, 1999). "Weird Science: Are Dr. Frank Baxter and those wacky Bell Science films ready for a comeback?". Sonoma County Independent. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
• Day, James (1995). The vanishing vision : the inside story of public television. University of California. p. 67. ISBN 9780520086593. OCLC 31409990. The English professor from USC was rare, a scholar gifted with the power of poularizataion for whom television proved a natural milieu. His irrepressible enthusiasm for the Bard of Avon was instantly contagious and levitated him into the modest realm of educational television stardom.

• Frank C. Baxter on IMDb
• Frank C. Baxter at Find a Grave