Joby Baker might have had a bigger TV career if only he was better at memorizing his lines.
The Montreal native, who passed away June 22 at 92, was raised in Hawaii before studying acting in New York. He had only one starring role on television. That was when he was paired with Ronnie Schell in the 1967-68 one season wonder Good Morning World. The series, about two radio morning disc jockeys, also starred Billy De Wolfe, Julie Parish as Baker’s character’s wife and a young actress destined for bigger things – Goldie Hawn.
Schell called Baker, “a great serious actor,” who nonetheless had problems working before a studio audience. “He didn’t have the best memory for the work and it really hurt his career,” said Schell, whose own memory was still sharp when I spoke with in 2022.
Another former brioux.tv: the podcast guest was Dick Van Dyke Show writer-producer and Good Morning World co-creator Bill Persky. He liked Baker but confirmed that the actor had a memory deficit. As with Van Dyke’s series, the Morning World sitcom was shot on the Desilu lot in Los Angeles. When the studio was sold in the late ‘60s, Persky attended a prop sale. “I thought I’d go down and buy something as a memento,” he said, “and I came across a lamp. And there on the lamp shade was one of Joby’s lines of dialogue.”
Baker’s memory problems did not keep him out of features early in his career. He broke through in the Sandra Dee-Connie Francis-Shelley Fabares era, first as a surfer named Stinky in “Gidget” (1959). He worked three episodes of Dragnet around the same time before landing roles on Surfside 6. More surfer films followed including “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” (1961), and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (1963).
Baker also played a comic-relief drummer in Elvis Presley’s band in “Girl Happy” (1965).
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In the mid-‘60s, Baker did two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show which would have put him on Persky’s radar heading into the Good Morning World auditions. Memory problems aside, Persky and others praised Baker as funny and a good actor.
Under contract to Columbia, his mix of TV sitcoms and dramas throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s included Combat!, F Troop, Death Valley Days, Dr. Kildare, Love American Style and Mannix. He was also in family movies such as Disney’s “Blackbeard’s Ghost”, ”The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin,” and “Super Dad” with Kurt Russell.
He kept working into the ‘80s, appearing in Simon & Simon and Quincy, with final roles in Tucker’s Witch and The Paper Chase (1984).
Suggesting, in later interviews, that he was never comfortable with stardom, Baker walked away from acting at 50 and pivoted towards becoming a painter and sculptor. His third wife was singer-songwriter Dory Previn (previously married to composer Andre Previn), who died in 2012.
Baker died just 10 days before his Good Morning World costar, Ronnie Schell, passed away at 94.
