Tom Baker

Background

Baker was the son of Tom Baker Junior. and Ellie, military parents who retired in San Francisco.

Career

Baker started his career as a stage actor in New York City and assisted Norman Mailer in the stage adaptation of Mailer"s novel The Deer Park. Once he moved to Hollywood, he acted in a series of B movies. He also continued to do stage work, directing the 1973 premiere of The Grabbing of the Fairy, a masque by Michael McClure.

He produced and directed his own film, Bongo Wolf"s Revenge in 1970.

The cast included Severn Darden and P J Proby. One of Baker"s co-stars in I, a Manitoba was Valerie Solanas, who later shot Warhol in his office at The Factory.

Relationship with Jim Morrison The relationship he had with Morrison and Morrison"s long term girlfriend Pamela Courson was described in a memoir, Blue Centre Light, and an extract was published in High Times in June 1981. Clay Wilcox took the role of Baker and Jim Morrison was played by Stephen Nichols.

In November 1969, Morrison found himself in trouble with the law after harassing airline staff during a flight to Phoenix, Arizona to see The Rolling Stones in concert.

Both he and fellow traveller Baker were charged with "interfering with the flight of an intercontinental aircraft and public drunkenness". Baker died of a drug overdose in 1982 on the Lower East Side in New York City, in a seedy junk-house for heroin addicts. His death caused confusion in the media.

British actor Tom Baker was more well-known at the time, due to his portrayal of the Doctor on the British Broadcasting Corporation programme Doctor Who, and was also a heavy drinker.

Some publications mistakenly reported that the British actor had died. In Sunset People, the documentary about Hollywood directed by Jana Boková, two actors sitting in Schwab"s Pharmacy discuss the news of Baker"s death.

Connections

Friend:

Paul Ferrara