King Baggot - Decline

Decline

Baggot and his wife, Ruth, who had separated on August 20, 1926, were divorced in 1930. She filed on grounds of desertion, stating in the complaint that he was a bad example to their son. She said he would return home after drinking and be in a boisterous mood. When the 1930 census was taken on April 7, Baggot was lodging by himself.

His alcoholism and problems with certain studio executives eventually ended Baggot's directing career. He turned to playing character roles, bit parts and even jobs as an extra, and appeared in scores of movies in that capacity through the 1930s and 1940s, including Mississippi (1935).

Baggot played the uncredited role as a policeman on the street in The Bad Sister (1931), which starred Conrad Nagel and Sidney Fox, with Bette Davis in her first movie role. He had the role as Henry Field, a movie director, in the Monogram Pictures drama Police Court (1932) co-starring Henry B. Walthall, which told the story of a has-been alcoholic actor (Walthall) trying to make a comeback. In 1933, Baggot and former leading lady Florence Lawrence, Paul Panzer and another former great star of the silent era, Francis Ford, were given bit parts in what would be former co-star Mary Pickford's last movie, Secrets.

In her Los Angeles Times gossip column on March 1, 1946, Hedda Hopper wrote, "King Baggot, who used to be one of our top directors, is working as an extra in The Show-Off. While living at the Aberdeen Hotel in Venice, California, Baggot made his final movie appearance in the uncredited part of a bank employee in the comedy My Brother Talks to Horses starring Butch Jenkins and Peter Lawford. Illness then forced his retirement.

King Baggot died at age 68 from a stroke at a sanatorium in Los Angeles. His funeral service was conducted in the chapel of Pierce Brothers Hollywood Mortuary at 1 p.m. on Thursday, July 15, 1948. He is interred in Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles. He has a star for his work in motion pictures on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6312 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood.