Fay Baker

Fay Baker
Baker in 1950
Born	Fay Schwager (1917-01-31)January 31, 1917 New York City, U.S.
Died	December 8, 1987(1987-12-08) (aged 70) Sleepy Hollow, New York, U.S.
Other names	Beth Holmes
Occupation(s)	Actress, writer
Years active	1938–1965
Spouse	Arthur Weiss ​ ​ (m. 1940; div. 1965)​
Children	2

Fay Baker (born Fay Schwager; January 31, 1917 – December 8, 1987) was an American stage, film and television actress and writer. Using the pen name Beth Holmes, she wrote the novel, The Whipping Boy. She also published, under her own name, My Darling, Darling Doctors.

Baker's father was a surgeon, and her mother was a pharmacist. She attended Smith College.^[1]

Roles on radio soap operas provided Baker's early professional acting experience.^[1] Her Broadway career began in 1938 with a role in Danton's Death. Her final Broadway role was in Wonderful Journey (1946).^[2]

Baker remained in Hollywood for nearly two decades, acting in two dozen films, including star billing in The House on Telegraph Hill (1950).^[3]

She had a leading role in the 1950 crime drama Double Deal, and later played one of Ethel Barrymore's two daughters trying to seize control of and sell editor Humphrey Bogart's newspaper in the 1952 drama Deadline - U.S.A.

During her California years, she also appeared frequently on television. She is credited with guest parts on 30 different series beginning with Your Show Time in 1949 up to her final performance on Dr. Kildare in 1963. Her roles included comedy sitcoms (Hazel, The Donna Reed Show), drama (Perry Mason), and westerns (Have Gun - Will Travel). In 1958, she made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, playing Marian Newburn in "The Case of the Demure Defendant" and Stephanie Sabin in "The Case of the Perjured Parrot".

Prior to 1963, Baker began writing when a problem with her back prevented her from acting. She began work on a book and sold some nonfiction pieces to magazines, in addition to receiving $50,000 from a producer for one of her stories.^[4]

Baker married writer/producer Arthur Weiss^[4] on August 3, 1940, in Manhattan. They had two children, her son Jonathan was born in 1950, before divorcing in 1965. While Weiss remained in California working for Irwin Allen, she returned to New York with her two children and began a new career as an author.^{[citation needed]}

Baker used the pen name "Beth Holmes" to shield her family from being compared with fictional characters in the novel.^{[citation needed]}

Baker was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1972 and described the experience in her memoir, My Darling, Darling Doctors in 1975.^{[citation needed]} She lost her 15-year battle with breast cancer on December 8, 1987, at age 70.^{[citation needed]}

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fay Baker.

• Fay Baker at the Internet Broadway Database
• Fay Baker at IMDb