Fay Baker

Fay Baker (born Fay Schwager; January 31, 1917 – December 8, 1987) was an American stage, film and television actress, and a successful author under the pen name Beth Holmes. Her novel, The Whipping Boy, made the Los Angeles Times bestseller list in 1978. She also published, under her own name, My Darling, Darling Doctors.

Career

Fay Schwager's career began in New York with roles on Broadway in the early 1940s. She changed her name to Baker (from her mother's family) in 1944 in Another Love Story at New York's Fulton Theatre. She was "discovered" by Alfred Hitchcock in 1946 and given the role of Ethel in Notorious. While the part was minor, she told her daughter that Hitchcock made her stay on the set for the entire film shoot. The director felt that since he was paying her salary, she should be standing by at all times. She claimed she had had a larger role in the film but that much of her work ended up on the cutting room floor.

Baker remained in Hollywood for nearly two decades, acting in two dozen films with star billing in The House on Telegraph Hill (1950). She had one of the leading roles in the 1950 crime drama Double Deal, and later played one of publisher 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..