Biography
Herbert Baker (born Herbert Joseph Abrahams, 25 December 1920 – 30 June 1983) was an American songwriter and screenwriter for film and television. The son of composer Maurice Abrahams and singer Belle Baker, he studied at the Yale School of Drama and began his career writing for radio shows, including those of Danny Kaye and Henry Morgan.
Baker’s screenwriting credits include the 1948 film So This Is New York, several Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies such as Jumping Jacks (1952), Scared Stiff (1953) and Artists and Models (1955), and two Elvis Presley pictures, Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1958). He also contributed to The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) and later films including Murderers’ Row (1966), The Ambushers (1967) and The Jazz Singer (1980).
In television he wrote for variety shows and specials, winning Emmy Awards for An Evening with Fred Astaire (1959) and The Flip Wilson Show (1971). He received the Writers Guild of America’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award in 1983.
