Warner Baxter

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6290 Hollywood Blvd. A stepson, Jason McCallum Bronson, preceded him in death after succumbing to a drug overdose in 1989. He died shortly after of pneumonia. At the time of his death, he was survived by his wife Kim, four children, two stepchildren and two grandchildren. Suffering the pain of arthritis, Baxter had a lobotomy to ease the pain. Bronson died of pneumonia while suffering from Alzheimer's disease at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, California. By 1936, Baxter was the highest paid actor in Hollywood, but by 1943, he had slipped to B movie roles, and he began to star in a series of Crime Doctor films. At the time, Bronson (who shared the screen with McCallum in The Great Escape) bluntly told McCallum: "I'm going to marry your wife." Two years later, he made good on his boast and married Jill.

His first starring role was as the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1929), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He met her when she was still married to actor David McCallum. By 1910 Baxter was in vaudeville, and from there began acting on the stage. She was his second wife. Following the 1906 earthquake, he and his family lived in a tent for two weeks. Bronson was married to actress Jill Ireland from 1968 until her death in 1990. Born in Columbus, Ohio, he moved to San Francisco, California when he was nine. After the famous 1983 case of Bernhard Goetz, the actor recommended that people not imitate his character.

Warner Baxter (March 29, 1889 - May 7, 1951) was an American actor. He became a crime-fighting vigilante by night, a highly controversial role, as his executions were cheered by crime-weary audiences. He is also remembered for Death Wish (1974) which spawned several sequels, In Death Wish he played a Paul Kersey, a prosperous liberal New York architect until his wife was murdered and daughter raped. In the westerns The Magnificent Seven (1960) and the epic Once Upon a Time in the West, (1968) he played heroic gunfighters, taking up the cause of the defenseless. Bronson's most famous films include The Great Escape, (1963) in which he played Danny Welinski, nicknamed "The Tunnel King", a Polish prisoner of war, The Dirty Dozen, (1967) in which he played an Army death row convict conscripted into a World War II suicide mission.

He became quite famous on that continent, and was known by two interesting nicknames: The Italians called him "Il Brutto" ("The Ugly") and to the French he was known as "le sacre monstre," the "sacred monster." Even though he was not yet a headliner in America, his overseas fame earned him a 1971 Golden Globe as the "Most Popular Actor in the World." That same year, he wondered if he was "too masculine" to ever become a star in the US. Although he began his career in America, Bronson first made a serious name for himself acting in European films. In 1961 Bronson made an appearance with Elizabeth Montgomery in The Twilight Zone, in the episode "Two". One of his earliest screen appearances under his new name was as Vincent Price's henchman in 1953 horror classic House Of Wax.

Lithuanian was a name for people living in that regin of Poland). (Bronson is in fact half Polish). During the McCarthy hearings he changed his last name to Bronson as Russian-sounding names were suspect even though Buchinski is really spelled Buchinski and is more Polish then Russian. After the war, he decided to pursue the profession of acting, not from any love of the subject, but rather because he was impressed with the amount of money that he could potentially make in the business.

In 1943, Bronson was drafted into the Air Force and served as a tail gunner onboard B29 bombers. His family was so poor that at one time he was forced to wear his sister's dress to school because he had no other clothes. He was born as Charles Dennis Buchinski in the notorious Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania neighborhood of Scooptown, the 11th of 15 children of Lithuanian and Polish immigrants. He was blunt, physically powerful, and had a look of danger that fit such roles.

In most of his roles he starred as a brutal police detective, a western gunfighter, or a mafia hitman. Charles Bronson (November 3, 1921 - August 30, 2003) was an American actor of "tough guy" roles.