Joby Baker, the Canadian-born actor and painter whose relaxed charm made him a familiar presence across 1960s film and television, from the sun-washed "Gidget" pictures to a co-starring role on the CBS sitcom "Good Morning World," died on June 22, 2026, in New York's Westchester County. He was 92, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Born Joseph N. Baker in Montreal on March 26, 1934, he spent part of his childhood in Hawaii, where his family lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 before being evacuated to the mainland. He was drawn to performing early, working as a nightclub entertainer and impressionist before Hollywood found him.

Baker made his film debut in "Target Zero" in 1955 and soon settled into the kind of easygoing supporting roles that suited him. He appeared in "The Last Angry Man" in 1959, the final film of the celebrated Paul Muni, and turned up in the original "Gidget" that same year, eventually featuring across all three entries in the beloved beach-movie series. He shared the screen with Jack Lemmon and Ricky Nelson in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" in 1960 and played a drummer in Elvis Presley's band in the 1965 musical "Girl Happy." A frequent collaborator with Walt Disney's studio, he appeared in a run of family favorites that included "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin" in 1966, "Blackbeard's Ghost" in 1968 and "Superdad" in 1974, according to Deadline.

On television he was a working actor's working actor, moving through guest turns on "Perry Mason," "Dr. Kildare," "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and many more, and taking a recurring role as Pvt. Kelly on the wartime drama "Combat!" His most prominent showcase arrived in 1967, when he starred as radio disc jockey Dave Lewis on "Good Morning World," a single-season CBS comedy built around a morning-drive team. Baker and co-star Ronnie Schell played the on-air pair behind the fictional "Lewis and Clarke Show," and the ensemble included a young Goldie Hawn in what was her first professional role, as That Eric Alper noted. Baker's death came only days after that of Schell, his onetime radio-show partner.

Baker was candid about his ambivalence toward the spotlight. "I was not interested in stardom, in fact I was embarrassed by it," he once said. "I was the wrong type of person to be an actor." That temperament steered him toward a second creative life. Away from the soundstages he was a devoted painter, producing abstract work that he showed in Los Angeles galleries, and he lent his hand as an illustrator to books including "The Dory Previn Songbook" in 1995.

His personal life was closely woven into the arts. He was married four times, among them a long union with the lyricist and songwriter Dory Previn that lasted from 1984 until her death in 2012, and he later married Megan Moore. He was survived by his wife and five children.

Joby Baker belonged to a generation of performers who gave American screens their texture, the quick-witted faces just beside the leads who made a scene feel lived-in. He wore his craft lightly and his fame lighter still, trading the glare of the camera for the quiet of a painter's studio and the company of family. What endures is a body of work that keeps its warmth: the grinning sidekick of a dozen matinees, the radio man of a fondly remembered sitcom, and, beyond the credits, an artist who simply never stopped making things. His pictures will go on flickering, and his canvases will go on hanging, long after the applause has faded.