Baxter was loaned to RKO to appear in director Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942). She was Tyrone Power's leading lady in "Crash Dive" (1943), her first Technicolor film. In 1943, she played a French maid in a North African hotel (with a French accent) in Billy Wilder's "Five Graves to Cairo", a Paramount production. She became a popular star in World War II dramas and received top billing in "The North Star" (1943), "The Sullivans" (1944), "The Eve of St. Mark" (1944), and "Sunday Dinner for a Soldier" (1944), co-starring her future husband John Hodiak. Baxter later recalled, "I was getting almost as much mail as Betty Grable. I was our boys' idealized girl next door."