“Forgotten Hollywood”- A Voice For the Ages is Gone…

Posted on August 19, 2014 by raideoman1 | No Comments

Manny P. here…Don Pardo

   Don Pardo was a radio and television announcer whose career spanned over seven decades. A member of the Television Hall of Fame, Pardo was noted for his 70-year tenure with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as The Price Is RightJeopardy (with Art Fleming), and the NBC Nightly News. His longest and best-known announcing gig was for Saturday Night Live, a job he held for 38 seasons, from the show’s debut in 1975 until his passing.               DON PARDO –>

   He joined NBC as an in-house announcer in 1944, remaining on the network staff for 60 years. During World War II, Pardo worked as a war reporter for NBC Radio. Pardo made his mark quickly, reading news dispatches on the radio filed from the front lines during World War II. After the war, he was the announcer for such shows as the Colgate Comedy Hour and Your Show of Shows.

   In the early 1950s, he served as announcer for many of RCA’s and NBC’s closed-circuit color television demonstrations. Pardo squeezed in many other assignments at NBC, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Pardo was the on-duty live booth announcer for WNBC-TV in New York and the NBC network on November 22, 1963, and he was first to announce to network viewers that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

   Pardo appeared in several movies, mostly as himself, including Woody Allen’s Radio Days, an homage to the Golden Age of Broadcasting; and Honeymoon in Vegas. On television, he appeared in 30 Rock and his voice was  used in an episode of The Simpsons.

   The venerable Don Pardo was 96.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2014 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Bookmark this post:
Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Furl Google Bookmarks StumbleUpon Windows Live Technorati Yahoo MyWeb



Comments are closed.