| Skip Hinnant | |
| Birth Name: | Joseph Howard Hinnant |
| Birth Date: | 12 September 1940 |
| Birth Place: | Chincoteague Island, Virginia, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Actor |
| Years Active: | 1963–1990; 2006 |
| Children: | 4 |
| Relations: | Bill Hinnant (brother) |
Joseph Howard "Skip" Hinnant (born September 12, 1940) is an American actor.[1] [2]
Hinnant's first major role was as Cathy's boyfriend, Ted, on The Patty Duke Show from 1963 to 1965. In 1967, he played Schroeder in the original off-Broadway cast of Clark Gesner's You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, where his older brother, Bill Hinnant, played Snoopy.
Hinnant is best known as a featured performer on the children's show The Electric Company, which aired on the American educational television network PBS from 1971 to 1977. He was best known at that time as word decoder Fargo North, Decoder (a play on "Fargo, North Dakota")[3] and as "The Boy" in the soap opera satire "Love of Chair."
Despite generally being known for acting in more family-friendly works, Hinnant also performed in adult animation, providing the voice of Fritz the Cat in both the 1972 animated film of the same name and its 1974 sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat.
In 1977, he voiced the Easter Bunny in the Rankin/Bass made-for-television, stop-motion animated feature The Easter Bunny Is Comin' To Town, and in 1980, he provided the voice for the title character Pogo Possum in the direct-to-video feature film I Go Pogo (also done in stop-motion). His most recent acting roles were an appearance in the PBS science education show 3-2-1 Contact as Flash Jordan in the episode Measurement: How Fast? How Slow? on November 2, 1984, and a part in an episode of Kate & Allie as Bob Barsky's boss Brian Keyes in the episode "I've Got a Secret" on February 27, 1989. Then he retired from television acting and devoted his entire career to voice-over work at the beginning of 1990s, but in 2006 he made appearances in two retrospectives of The Electric Company: one was a PBS pledge drive special, the other was The Best of the Electric Company: Vol. 2.[4]
Hinnant was the longest-serving president of the New York branch of the Screen Actors Guild.