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") 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 the 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. Hinnant was the longest-serving president of the New York branch of the
Screen Actors Guild. ==Filmography==