Mary Landon

Mary Landon Baker was an American socialite, heiress, and Broadway performer born on August 15, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. She died in 1961. Her father, Alfred L. Baker, was a Chicago lawyer and financier, and her mother was Mary Corwith. She had an older sister, Isabelle, known in 1926 as Mrs. Robert M. Curtis and later as Mrs. Isabelle Baker Curtis Welch, as well as two nieces named Isabelle and Priscilla.

Baker appeared on Broadway in 1927, with her credited stage work including the production Miss Princess. That same year, her father died and left her a substantial inheritance, which provided her the financial independence to live on her own terms for the remainder of her life.

Baker became widely known in the press for her romantic life rather than her stage career. In the early 1920s, newspapers around the world covered her repeated decisions to leave Allister McCormick at the altar. In 1926, she was briefly engaged to Bojidar Pouritch, a Yugoslav diplomat, an engagement that a New York Times correspondent described as causing the greatest excitement since the European war. Among the other suitors she declined were an English lord, a wealthy Spaniard, and an Irish prince. The New York Times also reported that theater actor Barry Baxter died of a heart attack on the day Baker ended her relationship with him. Baker reportedly received 65 marriage proposals over the course of her life and never married.

Baker spent most of her life in Chicago. British politician and writer Henry Channon, known as Chips, referred to her repeatedly in his published diaries, suggesting a lasting connection between the two.