[2] Baxter was born as Feodora Kathleen Alice Forde in Bremen, Germany to an Anglo-Irish naval engineer father and a German mother of noble background, Hedwig von Dieskau.

[5] She made her debut on the London stage at the age of 15 at the Adelphi Theatre in 1925 as an urchin in a short-lived musical, Love's Prisoner.

[8] She made her screen debut in 1930 in a B-movie, Bed and Breakfast, and acted in a succession of films in the 1930s, most famously Blossom Time with Richard Tauber in 1934.

[16] Newspaper journalist Tom Vallance described Jane Baxter as "the epitome of middle-class breeding – sensible and practical, pretty rather than glamorous, with a delicate complexion.

[8] Of her performance in the film Ships with Wings, Prime Minister Winston Churchill called Baxter "that charming lady whose grace personifies all that is best in British womanhood.