La Fontaine - The King of Voice-Overs Passes Away at 68
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I was saddened to hear that Don La Fontaine passed away today. If you have been to a movie theatre in the past 30 years, you have certainly heard his famous voice-overs. Comedians like Pablo Francisco and others have made their claim to fame by impersonating and paying homage to La Fontaine’s unique vocal talent. Recently, La Fontaine took part in ads with Geico Insurance, using his famous introductory line - “In a world” and people began to immediately associate the man with the voice that they had been hearing for years.
Pablo Francisco’s Impersonation - Perfect!
From La Fontaine’s Website:
Over the past 25 years, LaFontaine cemented his position as the “King of Voice-overs.” Aside from his continuing work in the trailer industry, he has also been the voice of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and UPN, in addition to TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network. By conservative estimates, he has voiced hundreds of thousands of television and radio spots, including commercials for Chevrolet, Pontiac, Ford, Budweiser, McDonalds, Coke, and many other corporate sponsors.
Movie trailers will never be the same and anyone who tries to emulate or copy his style will come off as cheap and not genuine. La Fontaine will remain “the voice” of the movies. Salute! What is your favorite La Fontaine movie trailer voice-over? Leave me a comment and let me know. Let’s get a discussion started on Lockergnome. We salute you Don, have a safe trip to where the next life brings you.
One Comment
Buffet
September 6th, 2008
at 3:18am
Everyone marvels at my ability to instantly identify voices, particularly those of celebrities in commercials. I marvel that they can’t! As someone who’s always been intrigued with voices, I gotta say La Fontaine’s was, make that IS, one of the coolest of all time!