Melville Baker

Like his father, Mel was a writer, first for the stage and then film. He left the past behind–including his first wife–and moved to Los Angeles.

In June of the same year, 1929, Adolphe Menjou’s first talking movie, “Fashions In Love,” was released, adaptation and dialogue by Robert’s son, Melville Baker. In July, Lillian Gish’s first talking movie was announced, “One Romantic Night,” an adaptation by Melville Baker of his translated play for the stage, “The Swan.” (Incidentally, if you’ve never seen the 1956 remake of “The Swan,” do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s an all-time favorite among favorites!)

Mel married Humphrey Bogart’s agent, Mary Huntoon, and they built a home in Stone Canyon. The house is on tourist maps now, because Bogie’s third marriage, to Mayo Methot, took place there. Mel was Bogie’s best man.

Melville Baker’s next movies included the mystery “Darkened Rooms,” “His Woman” with Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and “Next Time We Love,” starring a newcomer, Jimmy Stewart.

Careers in Hollywood can flare brightly and die quickly away, but Mel Baker wrote stories and screenplays for nearly twenty years. His twenty, big-screen projects included: “Zoo in Budapest” with Loretta Young, “Now and Forever” with Shirley Temple, Gary Cooper, and Carole Lombard; and “The Last Days of Pompeii.” He played cards with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ogden Nash, and attended benefits with the elite of film-land society–Mary Pickford, Fred Astaire, Mae West, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer…

Above Suspicion, Mel Baker’s last film (1943) starred Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford as newlyweds who agree to spy on the Nazis for the British Secret Service while they are on their European honeymoon. The movie’s title, “Above Suspicion,” came from the unlikely pairing of a honeymooning couple and espionage.

Mel spoke several languages, moved with ease in the Hollywood scene, and competed with an awful lot of other talent to turn out movies at the same rate as his aunt wrote her novels. Clearly, he was full heir to the Baker creative legacy. Then he stopped. Did he get black-listed? Lose interest? Run afoul of someone in Hollywood? What would make a prolific, successful writer simply stop?

Melville Baker started his writing career by traveling through Europe and finding scripts he could translate and adapt for the stage. In 1956, he packed two suitcases and a canvas bag and traveled to Nice, France where he stayed in the Cecil Hotel, in sight of the Mediterranean. He died there of a heart attack in 1958. He was just fifty-seven years old.

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