Lenny Baker

Leonard Joel Baker was born on January 17, 1945, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the middle of three sons born to William Baker, who operated his own plumbing business, and Bertha Baker, née August. His brothers, Alan and Malcolm, eventually followed their father into plumbing, while Baker pursued a different path. He described his upbringing as "middle-middle class" and, as the middle child, referred to himself as "the pickle in the middle." His interest in performance began early: he was cast in a school play as an elephant in kindergarten, and by fourth grade he was appearing on stage consistently, eventually serving as vice president of Brookline High School's dramatic society.

After graduating high school in 1962, Baker enrolled at Boston University, where he majored in acting and graduated in 1966. During his college years he performed with the Spa Music Theatre in Saratoga Springs, New York, with Boston University's Theatre Division, and with the Harvard Summer Players at the Loeb Drama Center. Rather than accepting offers to work in New York theater immediately after graduation, he chose instead to join the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky at the invitation of director Richard Block, reasoning that playing substantial roles in a smaller company was preferable to minor work in New York. He made his acting debut there in September 1966, playing Tom Stark in All the King's Men. The following year he joined Actors' Equity and earned the minimum weekly wage of $125. He remained with the company through May 1968.

Baker subsequently worked at Center Stage in Baltimore before making his Off-Broadway debut in 1969 in City Scene. That same year he appeared in three plays by Israel Horovitz at the Manhattan Theatre Club, performed in The Year Boston Won the Pennant at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, and took roles in Summertree and The Real Inspector Hound. In 1973 he appeared as Mike Lovett in Barbary Shore at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. He also spent five summers at the O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference and its Theatre for the Deaf in Waterford, Connecticut, working alongside young playwrights. He credited that experience as his best training, stating that observing deaf performers taught him to make bold physical use of his body in comedy.

In 1974, Baker traveled to Paris, where he performed two Israel Horovitz one-act plays, Hop Scotch and Spared. That same year he made his Broadway debut in The Freedom of the City at the Alvin Theatre. In 1976 he performed with the Phoenix Company in Secret Service, playing Henry Dumont at the Playhouse Theatre, and in Boy Meets Girl, playing Robert Law at the same venue. He also appeared with the company in Pericles, Prince of Tyre and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and later performed in Henry V and Measure for Measure during a season with the New York Shakespeare Festival. Beyond New York, Baker appeared in regional theater productions in Chicago, St. Louis, and Boston.

His most prominent Broadway role came in I Love My Wife at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1977, in which he played Alvin. The performance earned him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, both in 1977. On the opening night of that production, his apartment was burglarized, and among the items stolen were his television set and his bar-mitzvah ring. During his run in the show, Baker publicly criticized the Shubert Organization, which operated the Barrymore Theatre, over pay disparities between male and female cast members, calling the difference "outrageous discrimination." When his contract came up for renegotiation in August 1977, he was reluctant to commit to more than one additional year, expressing concern that a longer commitment would limit his artistic development.

Alongside his stage career, Baker worked in film and television. He appeared in the 1973 television film Pueblo and had roles in television series including Kojak, Starsky and Hutch, The Rockford Files, and Taxi. His final television appearance was a guest role on Taxi in 1979. On film, he appeared in The Paper Chase and took the lead role in Next Stop, Greenwich Village, Paul Mazursky's 1976 semi-autobiographical film, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.

Baker stood six feet tall and weighed 145 pounds at the height of his career. He described the characters he played as "long, skinny funny-looking goofy types" and acknowledged that his distinctive physique and prominent nose frequently helped him secure auditions and roles. He was a vocal advocate for actors pursuing a college education, believing a broad liberal education to be essential grounding in the arts. He also expressed an ambition to become a playwright and to form a repertory company with Paul Mazursky and Leonard Nimoy.

In August 1978, Baker was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Surgery to remove the cancer caused serious, irreparable damage to his vocal cords. Despite these setbacks he continued to work, though a throat ailment forced him to leave the cast of the pre-Broadway production Broadway, Broadway. His last recorded stage performance took place in March 1980, when he reprised the Horovitz one-act plays he had originally performed in Paris. As his illness progressed, he relocated to Miami to live with his parents. He was ultimately diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer and died on April 12, 1982, at the Community Hospital of South Broward in Hallandale Beach, Florida. He is buried at Moses Mendelsohn Memorial Park in Randolph, Massachusetts.