Joby Baker, the nightclub entertainer and painter who played drums in a band with Elvis Presley in Girl Happy and starred as a radio D.J. on the short-lived CBS sitcom Good Morning World, has died. He was 92.
Baker died June 22 at a hospital in Yonkers, New York, his granddaughter Sofia Silverman told The Hollywood Reporter.
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’s final movie and shared the USS Echo with Jack Lemmon and Ricky Nelson in The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960).
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.
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’ manager in another song-filled film of its time, Hootenanny Hoot (1963).
