Skip Hinnant, Actor on ‘The Electric Company’ and Voice of Fritz the Cat, Dies at 86

Skip Hinnant, who portrayed the wordsmith Fargo North, Decoder and other characters as an original castmember on The Electric Company and voiced the hedonistic Fritz the Cat in a pair of animated movies, has died. He was 86. Hinnant died Sunday in Denver, his family announced. Hinnant started his career with a recurring role as Ted, boyfriend to Patty’s identical twin sister, Cathy, on the first two seasons of ABC’s The Patty Duke Show from 1963-65. A couple years later, he played Schroeder in the original off-Broadway cast of Clark Gesner’s musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, in which his older brother, Bill Hinnant, portrayed Snoopy. Hinnant joined Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Judy Graubart, Lee Chamberlin and others in the original cast of PBS’ The Electric Company, the Sesame Street offshoot that went on the air in 1971. Hinnant struck with the program through its 1977 conclusion, and in addition to Fargo North, a detective who unscrambles word messages and phrases for clients, he played the boy in soap opera-styled “Love of Chair” skits and Frankenstein, among other parts. While on the kids show, Hinnant went in another direction by voicing the leftist, perpetually stoned title feline in Fritz the Cat (1972), based on the comic strip by Robert Crumb and directed by Ralph Bakshi. Filled with profanity, violence, sex and nudity, it was the first animated film to be rated X. Hinnant then returned for the sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974); that was the first animated film to get an R rating. From left: Karen Johnson, Bob Balaban, Skip Hinnant, Reva Rose, Bill Hinnant and Gary Burghoff in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Everett Collection The youngest of three kids, Joseph Howard Hinnant was born on Sept. 12, 1940, and raised on Chincoteague Island in Virginia. His sister, Jean, nicknamed him Skip, and it stuck. He followed his brother to Yale University, graduating in 1962. A year later, he performed at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner for President Kennedy as part of the Julius Monk satirical musical revue Struts and Frets. In You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, based on the Peanuts characters created by Charles M. Schulz, Hinnant and his brother opened at Theater 80 St. Marks in Greenwich Village alongside Gary Burghoff as Charlie and Bob Balaban as Linus. The show proved to be a big hit. He then appeared in the original 1968-69 Broadway production of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, directed by Mike Nichols. After the Fritz the Cat movies, Hinnant returned to the kids arena by playing the Easter Bunny in The Easter Bunny is Comin’ to Town, a 1977 stop-motion ABC special from Rankin/Bass that also featured the voice of Fred Astaire. He also did voices for Pogo Possum in the 1980 direct-to-video feature I Go Pogo, for Spidey Super Stories in the ’70s and for My Little Pony in the ’80s; handled lots of radio commercials and narration for kids books; and appeared onscreen on Kate & Allie and As the World Turns. And he served on the national board of SAG from 1980-2003. Survivors include his children, Chris, Jamie, Julie and Sara, and their respective spouses, Karen, Jennifer, Charles and Kevin; nine grandchildren; his longtime partner, Ruth Nerken, whom he met in 1985; and his ex-wife, Miriam Hinnant, whom he married in 1962. His brother drowned in 1978 at age 42 while vacationing in the Dominican Republic. A private celebration of life in Chincoteague is being planned. Donations in his memory can be made to the Entertainment Community Fund or the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. “Skip was known for his quick wit and never missed an opportunity to make a joke,” his family noted. “He also loved admiring the work of fellow entertainers, reveling in quality performances and the perfect harmony.”