Person

Baker, Hettie Gray

1880-1957

Hettie Gray Baker was born on July 12, 1881, in Hartford, Connecticut.

She was an American film editor and writer of motion picture titles and scenarios. She attended public high school in Hartford before taking a special course of study at Simmons College in Boston. She worked at the Hartford Public Library (1900–1903), where she began writing movie scenarios during her spare moments. She sold her first story, "Treasure Trove," to Vitagraph Studios for $20 (equivalent to $732 in 2023) and continued to write and sell freelance works for the next six years. In 1903, she became a private secretary for the School for Social Workers in Boston, where she worked until 1907. She was then hired as a librarian for the Hartford Bar Library, a small law library, becoming the first woman law librarian in the United States. In 1913, she was employed by Hobart Bosworth's film company as a story editor. Her work included scenario writing and scripting stories for a series of silent films based on the work of Jack London. "Burning Daylight" (1914), "The Valley of the Moon" (1914), and "The Chechako" (1914). In February 1914, she was one of the co-founders of the Photoplay Authors League – a precursor of the Screen Writers Guild – and during the first year of operation was elected vice president and a member of the board of control. In 1916, she went to work for Fox Film Corporation (later renamed Twentieth Century Fox) as a film editor. During her first year, she edited "A Daughter of the Gods," Hollywood's first film with a million-dollar budget, and, listed as H.G. Baker, may have been the first female editor to be acknowledged in a film's credits. She was the editor for "Queen of the Sea" (1918) starring Annette Kellerman, and "The Iron Horse" (1924), directed by John Ford. Hettie was a writer and editor for over 20 films but was rarely credited. By 1938, Hettie was a movie executive, serving as censor representative for Twentieth Century Fox. Being a cat-lover, later in her life, she wrote several books about cats.

She died on November 14, 1957, in Porter, Niagara, New York, and is buried in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.