Gordon Hunt

Gordon Hunt, the director of TV cartoon favorites including "The Jetsons," "Scooby-Doo," and "The Smurfs," died Monday, Dec. 19, 2016, according to multiple news sources, including The Hollywood Reporter. He was 87.

The death also was announced by Roger Bridges, who is producing a documentary film about Hunt. Hunt also worked as a casting director and did voice-over work.

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Hunt, who was born April 26, 1929, in Sherman Oaks, California, worked in New York City as a freelance director and later became casting director for the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California. He held that post for 10 years. In the 1970s, Hunt directed animated cartoons for Hanna-Barbera for 20 years.

In addition to his cartoon work, Hunt directed episodes of television series including "Mad About You," which starred his daughter, actress Helen Hunt, who survives him. In 1995, he won a Directors Guild of America Award for outstanding directorial achievement in a comedy series for "The Alan Brady Show," an episode of "Mad About You."

In 2005, Hunt told Robyn Reede in an interview that he enjoyed casting animated voices.

"It was great," he said, "because there was only a small coterie of voice actors and so I began to bring in people from the theater that I had worked with who turned out to be really, really good at doing this. People like Rene Auberjonois, Ed Asner, really skilled actors who really loved coming in and doing these cartoons. Jonathan Winters was Grandpa Smurf. We had classic actors as well as Mel Blanc and some of those other great voices. I was there at the golden age of voiceovers. It was quite a treat for me."