"The King is dead."

The world was saddened by the passing of the King of trailer voice-overs, Don LaFontaine, who died Monday. He had been having complications from the treatment to his lung-related illness. He was 68. You may know him as the “movie voice” during every trailer from 1980’s “The Elephant Man” starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt, to 2000’s “Cast Away” starring Tom Hanks and over a thousand more and saying those four words that made the world’s ear perk up with interest to which ever preview was playing at the time, ‘In a world where…’

He was famous for his deep and theatrical booming voice, being heard in commercials and radio from McDonald to Geico insurance. He didn’t just do movie trailers and commercials, he also did voiceovers for TV also. He had been heard on “The Insider” and ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, TNT, TBS, even the Cartoon Network. His deep dramatic voice that made you stop what you were doing to listen, was also used for the announcer for the Academy Awards and the SAG awards.

According to Yahoo TV’s journalist Barry Garron, LaFontaine talked about the lung-related illness in the SAGWatch blog on Aug 11 2008, that he had been fighting for 30 years now from ‘on-and-off smoking.’ He had quit smoking 20 years ago, but apparently the damage was still there. “There are still a few miles to go before I’m back to 100%,” he writes with an optimistic attitude, “But that, I can assure, is going to happen.” He had a very confident on his full recovery up until the end.

In 2005, LaFontaine was awarded a lifetime achievement honor at The Hollywood Reporter’s 34 annual Key Art awards. Even though most people these days, when presented with his name, wouldn’t have any idea who he was, but when they heard his voice, would know exactly where they heard it from, known as “The Movie trailer voice.” Apparently he didn’t have any problem with people not knowing his name, causing him to live a quiet life with his wife, Singer-actress Nita Whitaker and three children, all daughters.

LaFontaine did his first voice-over for a film promo in 1965 for MGM, the film “Gunfighters of Casa Grande.” MGM was fond of it. Up until his death, he was doing about 7-10 voiceover sessions a day, still using that unfathomable and memorizing voice to catch all of our attention.

SAG president Alan Rosenberg had this to say about the passing of the most inexhaustible and recorded SAG actor of all time: “Don was a phenomenal actor and a prodigious and amazing voice talent who could, like the best voice artists, make any material uniquely his own. His contributions on and off ‘mike’ enriched the profession and the guild. He will be greatly missed by all of us.”


Not to bad for one of my first articles.