For 25-years his amazing voice was the movies’ voice. His deep baritone toned voiceover graced more than 5,000 movie trailers and 350,000 commercials in a 33-year career. Don LaFontaine died this week at age 68 of complications from a long illness.
News of his passing made headlines as his influence was felt in darkened movie theatres across the globe introducing films such as: The Godfather, Terminator II: Judgement Day and Shrek. His trailers often began with the trademark phrase, “In a world…” You knew in most every case, the trailer and his voice were probably going to be better than the film.
Working in marketing and advertising, I first heard his name mentioned by Dick Orkin of ChickenMan radio fame and founder, along with his brother of The Radio Ranch. Their Little Timmy commercials were on the air in virtually every market and they still make commercials on the ranch. We were creating radio commercials for a bank I worked with in Miami. LaFontaine was relatively new to the voice over business at the time and, according to Dick, “already was the gold standard of voices.”
LaFontaine recorded his first voice-over for the MGM film, “Gunfighters of Casa Grande” when an announcer didn’t show up for a recording session in 1965. The rest as they say was history. His is a familiar voice you never knew but was always present.
One of the gang including Mark Elliott (the annoyingly happy Disney voice), Nick Tate (Space 1999 captain) and Hal Douglas that made a fabulous intro film for the Director’s Guild of America awards one year. Watching them in the limo was like attending a voiceover master class like the University lecture I attended with Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny. There is something special about seeing these guys in their craft.
And he had a great sense of humour:
And inspired a great imitator:
I remember working on some radio spots for Price Waterhouse and the voiceover actor we hired twice over a five year span had some polyps removed from his throat. Lost 20 pounds and his voice changed. We had to scrap the project.
Don’s voice never changed and it was always very cool. In a world where a great voice has been suddenly silenced… we’ll miss you.
