Bob Baker, RIP

A puppeteer of significance passes.

... Bob Baker, founder of what is billed as one of the world’s oldest and longest-running children’s theater companies and who orchestrated marionette work for scores of films and TV, died Friday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90. ...

His work was featured in fims ranging from Disney’s Bedknobs And Broomsticks to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and A Star Is Born (1954 version). His TV work included Bewitched, Star Trek and Land Of The Giants. He created the hand puppet series Time For Beany on KTLA and worked in local TV with the series Adventures Of Bobo in the late 1940s.

Baker was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served as governor of the animation branch of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Time for Beany, of course, was the co-brainchild of Bob Clampett and featured early voice-work of a very young Stan Freberg.

Mr. Baker was going great guns when I was a tot, so his career stretches a looong way through entertainment history.