VoiceHunter.com Remembers Don LaFontaine
Don LaFontaine, husband, father, grandfather, and hero passed away September 1, 2008 in the afternoon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 68.
Don's life began in Duluth, Minnesota, born on August 26th, 1940. Once he graduated from high school, he joined the army and was stationed at Fort Meyer, Virginia working as a recording engineer for the United States Army Band and Chorus.
After his discharge from the army, Don entered the world of advertising, working at an agency that produced theatrical trailers (one of the only ones outside of Hollywood studios) where he was employed as a copy writer, coining such immortal phrases as "In a world", and "A one-man army", "No where to run, no where to hide and no way out" and many more.
In 1965, a voice talent who was supposed to record failed to show up for his session and it fell upon Don who had a nice voice to take his place, the first of thousands of movie trailers that he would record over his lifetime.
The phrases that he wrote in his agency days changed his calling from the writer who told you about the movies to become the voice who made you want to go to the movies.
He spent a number of years as a head of production for Kaleidoscope Films, Ltd; one of the premiere trailer production houses. In 1976, he started his own production company, Don LaFontaine Associates. His first assignment as an independent was "The Godfather, Part II."
In 1978 he was asked to join Paramount Pictures, heading up the trailer department. Over the next three years, he became literally the "Voice" of Paramount. In 1980 he was named Vice President, but he missed being involved in active production.
For 30 years, Don had been a fixture of modern-day entertainment, advertising, and has also been the voice of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and UPN, in addition to TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network recording hundreds of thousands of television and radio spots, including commercials for Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford, Budweiser, McDonalds, Coke, and many other corporate sponsors.
At last count, he has worked on nearly 5000 films, including appearances as the in-show announcer for the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards. Based on contracts signed, he held the distinction of being perhaps the single busiest actor in the history of SAG.
| VoiceHunter.com CEO, Adam Goodman Reflects on this great loss |
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I had the pleasure of getting to know Don over the years and I want to share the two things that I believe will be missed most. First, the VO industry as a whole had a leader who always included versus excluded. What his leadership brought was a standard of how the industry talent as a whole treated each other. It did not matter who you were, where in your career you were or how much money you made. Everyone was given the same respect from Don and hence THAT was the industry standard. Second, the upcoming talent, the ‘next’ wave of aspiring voice talent could always access Don. He made a commitment to their access to the same resources he felt he had along the way. I know the industry’s top talent can easily forget the assistance they had along the way but Don never did.
I can not grasp this loss and may not for a long time. I know all of us who succeed and prosper from the VO industry are obligated to continue the standard of behavior and commitment to the up and coming that Don has established. From knowing the best our industry has to offer, I am sure it will.
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| Voice Actor Tom Caine Speaks About His Dear Friend Don |
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You may not have known him. But you knew him. Don LaFontaine passed away today. He was a father, a husband, and - last on the list, I assure you -a voiceover legend.
20 years ago, I was voicing promos at NBC, trying to deal with the emotions of sitting in a chair that was still warm from Don LaFontaine and Townsend Coleman... and trying not to embarrass myself while "The Don" was waiting patiently for me to finish... for me to do in five takes what he could have done in one.
Then, after he sat down and completely blew me away, he invited me to go to lunch with him... in the fabled limo. I tried hard to hide the fact that I was walking away from my beat up "K-Car" toward his signature transpo... If he noticed, he didn'tcomment. What he did say, was that he thought I might actually make a go of it as a voiceover guy. And like a very small number of us so blessed, I did.
Over the years, we became friends. And as only a tiny handful of us in the entire worldcan claim, we became competitors. But as Andy, Dave, Jonathon, Ashton, George, Beau, Al, Scott and the rest all know,while we may have shared the field with him,there was never any real competition.
From the days when - as a Writer and Producer -he literally created the modern concept of the Movie Trailer - to when he single-handedly voiced over half the Trailers in the entire industry AND squeezed in Promos for half a dozen Networks, he was in every aspect, "The Don"... Our Patriarch.
My Favorite Don story was when I was hired to do the trailers for "Tombstone". As happened about ten times a day back then, the studios said "We need to use someone else... Don is on EVERYTHING!" So they had me do the entire campaign... Until the reviews started coming out... and they were not good. The cry went out from the boardroom, "Get Don LaFontaine!"
Imagine that... A gazillion dollar movie... with huge stars... a big director... with an advertising budget bigger than it took to make "Star Wars"... But MAYBE, just maybe, if Don LaFontaine did the trailers... it might actually save the movie. Don did the trailers until Siskel and Ebert's review panned it, then they went back to me to save a few bucks... Because if Don couldn't save it, it didn't matter who voiced the rest.
We laughed about it over lunch a few weeks later. He shook his his head in wonder at how - in his own words - "I guess I've become some sort of talisman."
Don was exactly that, for all of us. A Talisman. Of what what we could dream of being someday...and what we all knew -and know to this very minute - we will never equal.
He was, quite simply, the best that will ever be.
'Nita... girls... We cannot know the full hurt of your loss. But know that he touched our lives as well. And we will miss him greatly.
-Tom Kane
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| Links And Other Tributes To Don |
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