The Burbank Leader reports that the star died from pancreatic cancer, from which he’d been suffering on and off for 15 years.
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Hastings, who got his start in radio but rose to fame on TV in McHale’s Navy, first portrayed Gordon (who will be the lead character in the live-action TV series Gotham debuting on Fox in the fall) in 1993’s animated feature film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. He went on to play the role in Batman: The Animated Series and a number of spinoffs and tie-ins until 2003.
In the late 1970s, Hastings also lent his voice to Challenge of the Superfriends, although he was never credited with a specific character, only listed in the credits as a contributing voice actor. Before teaming with Mark Hamill on Batman: The Animated Series, Hastings shared screentime with him in Jeannie, on which he played Henry Glopp, a character he carried over to The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
Earlier still, he voiced Superboy and young Clark Kent in a number of animated projects in the ’60s, including The Batman/Superman Hour and Superboy.
And while many fans will point to Captain Video and His Video Rangers as the most obvious example of Hastings doing genre work while still young and working regularly in live action, the first in a lifelong series of comics adaptations for the actor would be a number of minor appearances on the TV adaptation of Dennis the Menace.
