Gerard Baldwin passed away last Wednesday, the 18th, according to the Houston Chronicle. He was 89.
Baldwin started his animation career in 1950 at UPA, as an-betweener I would guess. After a stint in the Korean War, he returned to UPA and then animated commercials at Playhouse Pictures. He arrived at Hanna-Barbera in 1959 and employed his distinctive style on the following cartoons:
Adventure is My Hobby (Snooper and Blabber)
Bare Faced Bear (Yogi Bear)
Bear For Punishment (Yogi Bear)
Big Top Pop (Augie Doggie)
Doggone Prairie Dog (Quick Draw McGraw)
Monkey Wrenched (Snooper and Blabber)
Six-Gun Spook (Quick Draw McGraw)
The backgrounds for five of them were painted by Joe Montell. Both left later in the year for Mexico to work for Jay Ward, with Baldwin directing various cartoons seen on Rocky and His Friends. He returned to Hanna-Barbera from 1979 to 1985 where he directed The Smurfs. Baldwin moved to Houston in 1989.
He had a unique and quirky way of drawing the characters in those ‘50s H-B cartoons. Compare his Yowp to Carlo Vinci’s Yowp (on the left). One of them looks like he’s been chowing down on a lot of duck dinners.
Here’s his Yogi Bear. He drew Yogi with a long neck and with the mouth way up in the snout.
Here’s a take from Doggone Prairie Dog. I understand he did the same swirling-eye thing with Bullwinkle.
He’s partly responsible for a couple of the most un-Hanna-Barbera-looking characters in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Here are the husband and wife in Monkey Wrenched, designed by Bob Givens. I couldn’t tell you how close Baldwin stuck to Givens’ layouts. Wifey badly needs a shave.
Baldwin’s older brother Howard was also in animation, dating back to the 1930s as a writer at Warner Bros.
You can read more about Gerard Baldwin in the Chronicle story and on his web site. We express our sympathies to the Baldwin family on their loss.