Favorite voices from TV shows

Some of my favorite voices are from daytime shows like for example Bill Wolff, who who announced for Another World from its debut in 1964 until (I believe) some time in the '80s, Johnny Olsen, who pulled extensive duty for Goodson-Todman game shows and Mel Brandt, who announced the soap opera The Doctors, not to mention Gene Wood, who also handled a lot of the Goodson shows and was Richard Dawson's sidekick on the original Family Feud.

 

Anything voiced by Mel Blanc or June Foray.

 

Paul Frees provided a lot of great voices through the years:



Also on my list of favorite voices are Rod Serling, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price

 

Dan Castellaneta as Homer on The Simpsons. He could read the phone book in that voice and I'd lose it.

 

Frank Nelson "Yessssss!"

 

Pat Buttram as Mr. Haney

 

Arnold Stang-Top Cat...

 

William Conrad, for his Rocky and Bullwinkle narration if nothing else, and there was plenty else.

 

Gotta be Mel Blanc or i's be huntin' wabbits!

 

Phil Hartman. No one was ever funnier on the Simpsons.

 

Allan "Rocky" Lane a.k.a



"Wilbuuur!"

 

What a talent. I've often said that there's very, very few people in the post-1980 SNL casts who could hold their own with the originals, but Phil Hartman is one of them. Brilliant guy. He could've had a great career just as an announcer, but he was a lot more than that.

 

Always enjoyed William Schallert, both on-camera and in voiceover on countless commercial spots.

 

Shadoe Stevens (Hollywood Squares)

 

Not from an actual show, but here's Don Robertson of CBS Sports (in opening billboards for The Prudential College Football Report, w/Jim Nantz, et al.)

 

“Hello Angels....”

 

I don't want to brag about having a great ear or anything... But I was just watching this random western episode when it sounded to me like the brunette had been dubbed by June Foray:

FF to 19:52



Just checked IMDb. Turns out I was right.

 

The late great Oliver Postgate

 

Three that come to mind:

Dick Tufeld. Most famous for being the voice on the B-9 Robot on LOST IN SPACE, he also did a good amount of live announcing on things like Oscar, Emmy, Grammy telecasts and commercial and trailer voiceovers. It took me years to finally figure out what his name really was. He'd be given a slot to announce his name on some of the live awards shows, "This is Dick Tufeld speaking," but I could never quite get that last name as it was always buried under audience applause. I thought it might have been Dick "DuBell". Dick also provided the famous narration for the opening of most episodes of Irwin Allen's other series, THE TIME TUNNEL. "Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze..."

William Woodson. This guy was not quite as prolific as Dick Tufeld, but his most famous announcing slot was for the opening of every episode of THE INVADERS. "Alien beings from a dying planet. Their destination: the Earth. Their purpose: to make it THEIR world..." His deep tones and the serious way he had about his pronunciations made to think everything he was saying was important. His other famous series narration was for THE ODD COUPLE.

John Facenda. Known as the voice of NFL films for many years, John Facenda was also the lead anchor of the local news on the CBS station in Philadelphia, WCAU-TV at the time. Since I grew up in Philadelphia, I was fortunate enough to hear Mr. Facenda on a nightly basis as we always watched his newscasts.

 

Yes, William Conrad also provided the announcer voiceover for THE FUGITIVE, and played Matt Dillon on the radio version of GUNSMOKE.

 

Art Gilmore (1912-2010)



He narrated scores of TV shows, commercials, record albums, and other media, but for movie buffs he will always be The King of the Trailers.

From his NY Times obit:

As the narrator of countless movie trailers (his wife estimated he did 3,000), Mr. Gilmore was an especially effective pitchman, delivering the language of hype with masterful conviction. Comedies, thrillers, romances, musicals, animation, documentaries — it didn’t matter. Among the films Mr. Gilmore promoted as coming attractions were “Dumbo,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Roman Holiday,” “Shane,” “Born Yesterday,” “Rear Window,” “South Pacific,” “War and Peace,” “Ocean’s 11,” “White Christmas” and “Bye Bye Birdie.”

“The screen jumps for joy with Glendon Swarthout’s inside story of those uproarious Easter vacations,” Mr. Gilmore pronounced in the trailer for “Where the Boys Are,” a 1960 comedy about college girls on the make. “Never before has any film contained such a full measure of the joy of living,” he asserted in the trailer for Frank Capra’s life-affirming small-town tale from 1946, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

For the 1953 science-fiction thriller “The War of the Worlds” he declared: “This could be the beginning of the end for the human race!” And in a virtuosic bit of melodramatic recitation, he described Alfred Hitchcock’s loopy and masterful psychodrama “Vertigo” (1958) as “the story of a love so powerful it broke through all the barriers between past and present, between life and death, between the golden girl in the dark tower and the tawdry redhead that he tried to remake in her image.”​

Shane (1953)

He could do any genre, and had impressive range. He did the opening for the super serious Highway Patrol for example. But IMHO he was best suited to comedy and lighter material, making Paramount the perfect studio for him.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis "Hollywood or Bust" 1956 theatrical trailer



He can be seen in the trailer for The Big Clock

The Big Clock Trailer (1948)