{"id":779097,"date":"2026-07-04T19:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/779097\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T19:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T19:07:10","slug":"joby-baker-dead-good-morning-world-actor-was-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/779097\/","title":{"rendered":"Joby Baker Dead: ‘Good Morning World’ Actor Was 92"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joby Baker, the nightclub entertainer and painter who played drums in a band with Elvis Presley<\/a> in Girl Happy and starred as a radio D.J. on the short-lived CBS sitcom Good Morning World, has died. He was 92. <\/p>\n

Baker died June 22 at a hospital in Yonkers, New York, his granddaughter Sofia Silverman told The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n

Managed early in his career by famed comedian Lou Costello, Baker appeared in The Last Angry Man (1959) alongside Paul Muni in the legendary actor\u2019s final movie and shared the USS Echo with Jack Lemmon<\/a> and Ricky Nelson in The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960).<\/p>\n

The Columbia Pictures contract player showed up in Gidget (1959), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963), starring Sandra Dee, Deborah Walley and Cindy Carol, respectively.<\/p>\n

Baker also worked opposite singer-actress Connie Francis in Looking for Love (1964) and When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965) and starred as a musicians\u2019 manager in another song-filled film of its time, Hootenanny Hoot (1963).<\/p>\n

In Girl Happy (1965), set during spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Baker portrayed the drummer Wilbur in a band with Presley\u2019s Rusty Wells, Gary Crosby\u2019s Andy and Jimmy Hawkins\u2019 Doc.<\/p>\n

When the fabled CBS sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show concluded its five-season run in June 1966, the network \u201cneeded to find a replacement [for Dick Van Dyke], and CBS decided it was me,\u201d he said in a 2020 interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So Dick Van Dyke Show principals Bill Persky, Sam Denoff, Carl Reiner<\/a> and Sheldon Leonard created Good Morning World, which premiered in September 1967 and featured Baker as Dave Lewis and Ronnie Schell as Larry Clarke, hosts of a morning-drive radio program (The Lewis and Clarke Show) in Los Angeles. (Schell died<\/a> three weeks ago.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were going to call it The Joby Baker Show,\u201d he said. \u201cI went to these guys and I begged them please, please, don\u2019t call it [that]. And I convinced them not to. It\u2019s too much responsibility for a painter who might be in a terrible TV show. I was shy and nervous about stardom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comedy lasted one season, canceled after 26 episodes.<\/p>\n

\"JulieThe cast of \u2018Good Morning World,\u2019 clockwise from center: Joby Baker, Julie Parrish, Billy De Wolfe, Goldie Hawn<\/a> and Ronnie Schell.<\/p>\n

Joseph Baker was born in Montreal on March 26, 1934. After his mother died when he was a toddler, his father \u2014 who had affectionally nicknamed him \u201cJobela\u201d \u2014 took him to live in Oahu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n

When Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, Baker escaped injury in the immediate aftermath when the house he was living in was hit by friendly fire. He and his stepmother quickly left the islands, taking the RMS Aquitania with thousands of other evacuees to San Francisco, he recalled<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n

After attending school in New York City, he came to Los Angeles and launched a nightclub act that got him laughs as a Jerry Lewis<\/a> impersonator.<\/p>\n

While in the U.S. Army, where he entertained the troops, he served with the husband of Costello\u2019s first daughter, Paddy. He convinced the comic to come to his camp to do a show, and he would become his friend and then his manager. Baker said he often stayed at Costello\u2019s home in the San Fernando Valley on weekends.<\/p>\n

Baker was working as an NBC page in Hollywood when he got on The Red Skelton Hour in 1952, and he made his movie debut as an Army man in Target Zero (1955), starring Richard Conte and Charles Bronson.<\/p>\n

He then appeared on series including West Point, Dragnet, Bachelor Father, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Dr. Kildare, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Perry Mason and portrayed a young hood in Key Witness (1960), directed by Phil Karlson. He also recurred as Pvt. Kelly on Combat!<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he sang and cracked jokes as the opener for singer Johnny Mathis and \u201cused to swing on the curtains\u201d at the Sahara in Las Vegas before Costello and Bud Abbott came on.<\/p>\n

\"ConnieJoby Baker with Connie Francis in 1964\u2019s \u2018Looking for Love.\u2019<\/p>\n

Baker said he was showing his paintings out of an art gallery on La Cienega Boulevard when author Ray Bradbury walked in and mentioned that he had written a play to be performed down the street at the Coronet Theatre.<\/p>\n

Baker then was cast as a Mexican named Vamanos in Bradbury\u2019s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, and his often ad-libbed performance impressed the creators of Good Morning World. (It also helped that Baker had appeared in two final-season episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show.)<\/p>\n

Good Morning World, delayed a season because Persky and Denoff were starting That Girl for Marlo Thomas<\/a>, also featured Julie Parrish as Baker\u2019s onscreen wife; Goldie Hawn \u2014 in her first professional role \u2014 as her wacky friend; and Billy De Wolfe at the station manager. (After the series was canceled, Hawn was quickly hired for Rowan & Martin\u2019s Laugh-In.)<\/p>\n

Baker also appeared in the Disney films The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1966), Blackbeard\u2019s Ghost (1968) and Superdad (1974); was a regular on two other short-lived shows, Stone and The Six O\u2019Clock Follies; and guest-starred on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, F Troop, Mannix, Medical Center and Quincy M.E., among many other series.<\/p>\n

Survivors include his fourth wife, Megan; his daughters, Ricka and Michelle; his son, Scott; his stepdaughters, Emma and Eliza; and his grandchildren, Sofia, Amelia, Finn, Avery, Zach and Monty.<\/p>\n

Baker also was married to actress Joan Blackman from 1959 until their 1961 divorce, to Joyce Harriet Winter from 1961 until their 1975 divorce and to lyricist, singer, songwriter and poet Dory Previn (Andre Previn<\/a>\u2018s ex-wife) from 1984 until her 2012 death. He illustrated The Dory Previn Songbook, published in 1995, and some of her other books.<\/p>\n

See some of his paintings here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Baker considered himself foremost a painter. \u201cI was not interested in stardom, in fact I was embarrassed by it,\u201d he said. \u201cI was the wrong type of person to be an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joby Baker, the nightclub entertainer and painter who played drums in a band with Elvis Presley in Girl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,17614,134,16121,369030,369031,224032,31481],"class_list":["post-779097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-elvis-presley","tag-entertainment","tag-goldie-hawn","tag-jack-lemmon","tag-jerry-lewis","tag-marlo-thomas","tag-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}