Joby Baker Dies: Actor In ‘Gidget’ & Elvis Films, Disney Stalwart & ‘Good Morning World’ Co-Star With Ronnie Schell Was 92
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- Joby Baker died June 22 of natural causes in Mount Kisco, New York, at age 92 — just 10 days after the death of his Good Morning World co-star Ronnie Schell.
- Baker appeared in all three Gidget films — the 1959 original alongside Sandra Dee, Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), and Gidget Goes To Rome (1963) — and co-starred as the comic-relief bass player in the 1965 Elvis Presley vehicle Girl Happy.
- Baker became a Walt Disney Studio regular, appearing in The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967) with Roddy McDowall, Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) with Peter Ustinov, and Superdad (1973) with Kurt Russell and Bob Crane.
- Baker portrayed Private Kelly in the first season of the WWII drama Combat and racked up guest spots on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Mannix, The Dick Van Dyke Show, F Troop, and dozens of other series, with his final credit on the 1984 Paper Chase TV adaptation.
- Baker built a second career as a painter and sculptor from the 1970s on, with exhibitions in galleries across Los Angeles, New York, and New England; in 1984 he married Emmy-winning songwriter Dory Previn, and the couple later settled in a Berkshires farmhouse (Previn died in 2012).
Why it matters: For fans of 1960s television and the Gidget franchise, Baker's death — paired with Schell's just 10 days earlier — closes a specific stretch of era-defining small-screen comedy. It also removes a lesser-known painter whose second act in visual art earned gallery placements across three regions.
