Gordon Hunt, director, voice actor and father of Helen Hunt, dies at 87

Marty Ingels was trying to hustle work for one of his acting clients when he picked up the phone and tried to call Universal Pictures. He misdialed and got Hanna-Barbera instead, the animation studio.

“I asked for casting and got Gordon Hunt,” the actor-turned-agent recalled in a 1982 interview with the Associated Press. “He said there was an opening for “Pac-Man.” I thought he was talking about a luggage company.”

But sure, Ingels said. His client Robert Culp — years removed from his prime-time role in the hit TV series “I Spy” — would probably be a perfect fit, no matter the role.

“Hunt said no, that I was the one with that crazy voice.”

A longtime Hollywood director and voiceover coach, Hunt was known as the authority on matching a cinematic character with the absolutely perfect voice.

Yet Hunt gained respect and admiration in theater and in Hollywood far faster than fame.

“Gordon Hunt is quite possibly the greatest man you never heard,” actor Roger Bridges says in the unreleased documentary “Pebbles, Ripples and Waves,” a look at Hunt’s life and influence.

Helen Hunt, the Academy Award-winning actress, echoed the sentiment about her father. “I owe every successful thing in my life to Gordon,” she says in the documentary.

Gordon Hunt died Monday at his home in Los Angeles of complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 87.

Born in Pasadena in 1929, Hunt worked in New York before landing at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. as the theater’s casting director.

He was later hired by Hanna-Barbera and worked for a decade as the voice director during the studio’s frenetic days as the king of animation TV. He worked on “The Jetsons,” “The Smurfs,” “Scooby-Doo,” “The Flintstones” and more.

Later, while working as a voice coach in Hollywood, Hunt supplied the voice for the jaded character Wally in the TV adaptation of the comic strip “Dilbert.”

He also directed television sitcoms, including episodes of “Frazier,” “Suddenly Susan” and “Mad About You,” the long-running NBC show for which his daughter won four Emmys. He won the Directors Guild of America Award for his work on a 1995 episode, “The Alan Brady Show.”

He also had a professorial side — he taught acting and voice for decades and wrote a common-sense book on how to prepare for an audition.

“A good case of nerves is healthy,” Hunt advised in “How to Audition,” “as long as you can direct that energy toward something positive.”

In a 1993 round-table discussion with CNN, Hunt and a team of voice actors discussed the challenges and joys of adding voices to animated characters — old men, dogs with thick English accents, a nervous rocket ship captain. There was the liberation in not having to look like a specific character, of course. And there was good money to be made, if you were fortunate.

“It’s like a feeling of total freedom,” Hunt said. “It’s like being a kid.”

When his daughter landed a regular TV role at age 11, Hunt tempered her success with fatherly wisdom. “We made a deal,” he told the Daily Telegraph in 1998. “She could work as long as she had a B average.”

On stage, Hunt directed the L.A. Philharmonic production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” at the Hollywood Bowl. He also directed productions of “My Fair Lady,” “The Music Man” and “Mame” at the venue.

Away from theater and the Hollywood studios, Hunt had a range of interests — from surfing to music. He’d been fond of the Russian composer Rachmaninoff since childhood, and as an adult attended half a dozen Bruce Springsteen concerts.

“If you asked 100 people who knew him, 100 of them would say he was the kindest man they ever knew,” Helen Hunt said.

Gordon Hunt is survived by his wife, B.J. Ward; daughters Helen and Colleen Morrison Hunt; three grandchildren and two brothers.

steve.marble@latimes.com

Twitter: @stephenmarble