Background
Benjamin Baker was born on April 4, 1818, in New York City.
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Benjamin Baker
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He was an apprentice of harness-maker.
Career
After escaping from the trade of harness-maker to which he had been apprenticed, he made his stage début in Natchez, Missouri, February 14, 1837, as one of the soldiers, McStuart, in Rob Roy. For a season he followed the fortunes of this traveling company, sharing its hardships and gaining experience as a "walking gentleman, " playing among other parts Brabantio to the elder Booth's Othello. In 1839 he went to New York, continuing to support Booth at times, and, after a period at the New Chatham Theatre he was engaged as prompter and actor by Mitchell, who was about to open the Olympic Theatre.
Baker began his playwriting with burlesques such as Amy Lee, suggested by the then popular Amelie, but his best-known play brought into being almost a new dramatic variety. It was produced at the Olympic Theatre, Feb. 15, 1848. According to the rules, each member of the company could choose the play to be presented at his benefit and Baker wrote for his own a sketch descriptive of the seamy side of New York life, called A Glance at New York in 1848. It was built around the character of Mose, the New York volunteer fireman, the part being created for Frank Chanfrau. At first Mitchell refused to allow the play to be put on, because of what he considered its vulgarity, but Baker insisted, and when Chanfrau appeared, dressed in the red shirt and surmounted by the plug hat and soap locks of the "Bowery boys, " the house rose to him. The realism with which Baker had portrayed one of the city's institutions, and the skill with which Chanfrau acted the part, made them both celebrities. Baker wrote a companion play, New York As It Is, produced at the Chatham Theatre, April 17, 1848, Chanfrau acting in both plays on the same evening. Other playwrights imitated the character of Mose in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, and a species of play in which local conditions were made the background of vivid melodrama arose, to continue till the present day.
Baker himself contributed Three Years After (National Theatre, June 4, 1849) and Mose in China at the same theatre, June 24, 1850. None of these has been printed except A Glance at New York. In 1851 he managed jointly with W. B. English the Howard Athen'um, in 1852 conducted the National Theatre in Washington, D. C. , and then went to San Francisco, where he managed the Metropolitan Theatre for Mrs. Sinclair after her divorce from Edwin Forrest. An engagement to manage Edwin Booth's Company brought him back to the East in 1856, where he continued to act as manager and theatrical agent either in New York City or elsewhere. In 1885 he became assistant secretary of the Actors' Fund in New York and remained in that office until his death.
