Herbert Baker (screenwriter)
Encyclopedia
Herbert Baker born Herbert Abrahams in New York City
25 December 1920 died 30 June 1983 of cancer in Encino, California was a songwriter
and screenwriter
for television and films.
and singer Belle Baker
, Herbert attended Yale School of Drama
receiving a Bachelor of Arts
. It was no surprise that Herbert would enter the musical field. His first Broadway credit was in 1944 as the lyricist of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
's arrangement of Offenbach's La Belle Helene
as well as other songs and musical pieces for Helen Goes to Troy that ran for 97 performances.
radio show. Henry Morgan
hired Baker to write for his radio show in 1947. Baker began his career in screenwriting in 1948 with Morgan's film debut So This Is New York
, co-written with Carl Foreman
and based upon Ring Lardner
's 1920 novel The Big Town. Baker was a Yale classmate of director Richard Fleischer
and recommended him to Stanley Kramer
for So This Is New York
.
He wrote Dream Wife
with Sidney Sheldon
for Cary Grant
and Deborah Kerr
and several films for Dean Martin
and Jerry Lewis
such as Jumping Jacks
, Scared Stiff and Artists and Models
. The last was directed and co-written by Frank Tashlin
whom Baker worked with again on The Girl Can't Help It
.
Baker kept writing songs and contributed new songs to the Rose Marie (1954 film).
He wrote two films for Elvis Presley
, Loving You
and King Creole
. After Martin and Lewis
split up, Baker wrote Don't Give Up the Ship
for Jerry Lewis and worked on Lewis's television show.
Baker entered television writing and won Emmy Award
s for An Evening With Fred Astaire
in 1959 and The Flip Wilson Show
in 1971. He was nominated twice for The Flip Wilson Show in 1972 and 1973 and was nominated in 1964 for The Danny Kaye Show
. Baker wrote television scripts for many other singers such as Perry Como
, Frank Sinatra
, John Denver
, Ted Knight
, Mac Davis
and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Baker also wrote a television pilot
for a version of Some Like It Hot
in 1961.
In 1965, Baker wrote for The Dean Martin Show
. When Martin agreed to star in and co-produce a series of Matt Helm
films for producer Irving Allen
in the same year, Baker rewrote Oscar Saul's screenplay for the third and final draft of The Silencers
but only received a screen credit for the song parodies he wrote for Martin. Baker received sole credit for Murderers' Row
that Saul had rewritten but Baker rewrote again. Baker then wrote the third Matt Helm film The Ambushers
but wrote a serious spy adventure for Irving Allen, Hammerhead based on James Mayo's Charles Hood character.
His final screen credit was The Jazz Singer
in 1980.
Baker taught music and mentored jazz
saxophonist Azar Lawrence
who recalled Baker as "one of the greatest pianists who ever lived" and taught Lawrence to reach down inside himself for his music.
A member of the Writers Guild of America, west
board, Baker was awarded the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award from the guild in 1983.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
25 December 1920 died 30 June 1983 of cancer in Encino, California was a songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
for television and films.
Biography
The only son of composer Maurice AbrahamsMaurice Abrahams
Maurice Abrahams was a successful American songwriter in the early years of the 20th century.Popular songs co-written by Abrahams included "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" and "He'd Have to Get Under — Get Out and Get Under " ....
and singer Belle Baker
Belle Baker
Belle Baker was an American singer and actress. Popular throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Baker introduced a number of ragtime and torch songs including Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" and "My Yiddishe Mama". She performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and introduced a number of Irving Berlin's songs...
, Herbert attended Yale School of Drama
Yale School of Drama
The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...
receiving a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
. It was no surprise that Herbert would enter the musical field. His first Broadway credit was in 1944 as the lyricist of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...
's arrangement of Offenbach's La Belle Helene
La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène , opéra bouffe in three acts, is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...
as well as other songs and musical pieces for Helen Goes to Troy that ran for 97 performances.
Screenwriting
In 1945, Baker wrote for the Danny KayeDanny Kaye
Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...
radio show. Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Henry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
hired Baker to write for his radio show in 1947. Baker began his career in screenwriting in 1948 with Morgan's film debut So This Is New York
So This Is New York
So This Is New York is a 1948 movie comedy starring acerbic radio and television comedian Henry Morgan and directed by Richard Fleischer. The cynically sophisticated screenplay was written by Carl Foreman and Herbert Baker from the 1920 novel The Big Town by Ring Lardner.This remains the only...
, co-written with Carl Foreman
Carl Foreman
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the notable film High Noon. He was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Biography:...
and based upon Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
's 1920 novel The Big Town. Baker was a Yale classmate of director Richard Fleischer
Richard Fleischer
-Early life:Fleischer was born in Brooklyn, the son of Essie and animator/producer Max Fleischer. He started in motion pictures as director of animated shorts produced by his father including entries in the Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman series.His live-action film career began in 1942 at the RKO...
and recommended him to Stanley Kramer
Stanley Kramer
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...
for So This Is New York
So This Is New York
So This Is New York is a 1948 movie comedy starring acerbic radio and television comedian Henry Morgan and directed by Richard Fleischer. The cynically sophisticated screenplay was written by Carl Foreman and Herbert Baker from the 1920 novel The Big Town by Ring Lardner.This remains the only...
.
He wrote Dream Wife
Dream Wife
Dream Wife is a 1953 romantic comedy film starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.It was directed by Sidney Sheldon and produced by Dore Schary, from a screenplay by Herbert Baker, Alfred Lewis Levitt and Sidney Sheldon. The music score was by Conrad Salinger, the...
with Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon
Sidney Sheldon was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show , I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart , but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game ,...
for Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
and Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...
and several films for Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
and Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...
such as Jumping Jacks
Jumping Jacks
Jumping Jacks is a 1952 film starring the comedy team of Martin and Lewis. The movie was released by Paramount Pictures.-Plot:Chick Allen is a paratrooper. He invites his former partner, Hap Smith , to help out with a show that he and the other soldiers are preparing...
, Scared Stiff and Artists and Models
Artists and Models
Artists and Models is a 1955 Paramount musical comedy in VistaVision and marked Martin and Lewis's fourteenth feature together as a team. The film co-stars Dorothy Malone, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg, and Shirley MacLaine.-Plot:...
. The last was directed and co-written by Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin, born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, also known as Tish Tash or Frank Tash was an American animator, screenwriter, and film director.-Animator:...
whom Baker worked with again on The Girl Can't Help It
The Girl Can't Help It
The Girl Can't Help It is a 1956 comedy musical film starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, and Edmond O'Brien. It was produced and directed by Frank Tashlin, with a screenplay adapted by Tashlin and Herbert Baker from an uncredited novel Do Re Me by Garson Kanin...
.
Baker kept writing songs and contributed new songs to the Rose Marie (1954 film).
He wrote two films for Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, Loving You
Loving You
Loving You is an American motion picture directed by Hal Kanter, released by Paramount Pictures on July 9, 1957. The film stars Elvis Presley, Lizabeth Scott and Wendell Corey...
and King Creole
King Creole
King Creole is a 1958 American film directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Hal B. Wallis. The story was adapted from the Harold Robbins novel A Stone for Danny Fisher and featured Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, and Walter Matthau. The film tells the story of a nineteen-year-old who gets mixed...
. After Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis were an American comedy team, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis as the comedic "foil". The pair first met in 1945; their debut as a duo occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24/25, 1946....
split up, Baker wrote Don't Give Up the Ship
Don't Give Up the Ship
Don't Give Up the Ship may refer to:* "Don't give up the ship", the dying command of James Lawrence in 1813 aboard the USS Chesapeake* "Don't Give Up the Ship", words on the battle flag of Oliver Hazard Perry aboard the USS Niagara in the same year and also the name of a documentary video series by...
for Jerry Lewis and worked on Lewis's television show.
Baker entered television writing and won Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s for An Evening With Fred Astaire
An Evening With Fred Astaire
An Evening with Fred Astaire is a one-hour live television special starring Fred Astaire, broadcast on NBC on October 17, 1958. It was highly successful, winning nine Emmy awards and spawning three further specials, and technically innovative, as it was one of the first major television shows to be...
in 1959 and The Flip Wilson Show
The Flip Wilson Show
The Flip Wilson Show is a variety show that aired in the U.S. on NBC from September 17, 1970 to June 27, 1974. The show starred American comedian Flip Wilson; the program was one of the first American television programs starring a black person in the title role to become highly successful with a...
in 1971. He was nominated twice for The Flip Wilson Show in 1972 and 1973 and was nominated in 1964 for The Danny Kaye Show
The Danny Kaye Show
The Danny Kaye Show is an American variety show hosted by Danny Kaye that aired on CBS from 1963 to 1967 on Wednesday nights. Directed by Robert Scheerer, the show premiered in black-and-white, but later switched to color broadcasts...
. Baker wrote television scripts for many other singers such as Perry Como
Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, John Denver
John Denver
Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. , known professionally as John Denver, was an American singer/songwriter, activist, and humanitarian. After growing up in numerous locations with his military family, Denver began his music career in folk music groups in the late 1960s. His greatest commercial success...
, Ted Knight
Ted Knight
Ted Knight was an American actor best known for playing the comedic role of Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Henry Rush on Too Close for Comfort, and Judge Elihu Smails in Caddyshack.- Early years :...
, Mac Davis
Mac Davis
Mac Davis is a country music singer, songwriter, and actor originally from Lubbock, Texas who has enjoyed much crossover success...
and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Baker also wrote a television pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
for a version of Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot is an American comedy film, made in 1958 and released in 1959, which was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and George Raft. The supporting cast includes Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien and Nehemiah Persoff. The film is a remake by Wilder and I....
in 1961.
In 1965, Baker wrote for The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show is a TV variety-comedy series that ran from 1965 to 1974 for 264 episodes. It was broadcast by NBC and hosted by crooner Dean Martin...
. When Martin agreed to star in and co-produce a series of Matt Helm
Matt Helm
Matt Helm is a fictional character created by author Donald Hamilton. He is a U.S. government counter-agent—a man whose primary job is to kill or nullify enemy agents—not a spy or secret agent in the ordinary sense of the term as used in spy thrillers.-The character and the series:The...
films for producer Irving Allen
Irving Allen
Irving Allen was a theatrical and cinematic producer and director. He won an Academy Award in 1948 for producing the short movie Climbing the Matterhorn. In the early 1950s he formed Warwick Films with partner Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and relocated to England to leverage film making against a...
in the same year, Baker rewrote Oscar Saul's screenplay for the third and final draft of The Silencers
The Silencers (film)
The Silencers is the title of an American spy film spoof motion picture produced in 1966 and starring Dean Martin as agent Matt Helm. It is only loosely based upon the novel The Silencers by Donald Hamilton, as well as another of Hamilton's Helm novels, Death of a Citizen.The film was the first of...
but only received a screen credit for the song parodies he wrote for Martin. Baker received sole credit for Murderers' Row
Murderers' Row (film)
Murderers' Row is a 1966 American comedy-spy-fi film starring Dean Martin and very loosely based upon the Matt Helm spy novel Murderers' Row by Donald Hamilton, which was published in 1962....
that Saul had rewritten but Baker rewrote again. Baker then wrote the third Matt Helm film The Ambushers
The Ambushers (film)
The Ambushers is a 1967 spy comedy film filmed in Acapulco starring Dean Martin, Senta Berger and Janice Rule. It is loosely based upon the novel of the same title by Donald Hamilton....
but wrote a serious spy adventure for Irving Allen, Hammerhead based on James Mayo's Charles Hood character.
His final screen credit was The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer (1980 film)
The Jazz Singer is a 1980 American musical remake of the 1927 classic The Jazz Singer. It starred Neil Diamond, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Lucie Arnaz and was co-directed by Richard Fleischer and Sidney J...
in 1980.
Baker taught music and mentored jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
saxophonist Azar Lawrence
Azar Lawrence
Azar Lawrence is an American jazz saxophonist, known for his contributions as sideman to McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Woody Shaw. Lawrence was the tenor saxophonist Tyner used following John Coltrane's death....
who recalled Baker as "one of the greatest pianists who ever lived" and taught Lawrence to reach down inside himself for his music.
A member of the Writers Guild of America, west
Writers Guild of America, west
Writers Guild of America, West is a labor union representing film, television, radio, and new media writers. The Guild was formed in 1954 from five organizations representing writers, which include the Screen Writers Guild...
board, Baker was awarded the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award from the guild in 1983.
External links
- Herbert Baker at IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0048511/