Posted on 08/18/2014 9:30:51 PM PDT by dfwgator
Don Pardo, who literally introduced television viewers to some of America’s biggest stars and soon-to-be-stars as the longtime announcer for “Saturday Night Live,” died Monday in Tucson. He was 96.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
wow, rip don. 96 years, great run!
Bill Cullen was a pretty cool cat, too.
I think you are right. I do remember Bill Cullen...my mom really liked him. Somehow she and I got onto the conversation of him a few months ago, and she mentioned she was really upset when he died. She was a house mom so she watched all the game shows of that era.
A pleasant, good-natured and humorous fellow, he was.
Just got home from work. The guy on the local talk radio said that Pardo was a reporter during WWII.
bttt - Rest in peace Don Pardo.
Another of the great ones has passed.
Rest in peace, and enjoy your new job as God’s announcer!
One of the giants in his field. RIP.
Originally, it was believed there were no copies of Pardo reading the first bulletins of the JFK assassination. NBC didn’t have the capability (back in those days) to go live from their newsroom, so an editor grabbed some AP copy and ran to Pardo in the announce booth and told him to read it while an NBC News title card appeared on the air.
Pardo actually read two bulletins on the air before NBC could get Chet Huntley, Frank McGee and Bill Ryan into a small studio and move their cameras to that location.
As someone who spent part of his career slaving over a hot microphone, Pardo’s “read” is very impressive. Imagine being told you’ve got to break a major news story and keep providing updates until the network can get their “journalists” on the air. Pardo delivered the bulletins without so much as being able to preview the copy, and did it in a very straight-forward, professional style.
Imagine if you gave the same AP flash to someone like Shepard Smith or one of the talking heads on CNN or MSNBC. The results would have been much different—and far from professional.
It was the same at CBS with Cronkite, it took a half an hour for the camera to warm up to film live, so all you saw was a title card while Cronkite read the bulletins.
Pardo began working at NBC in 1944...as a staff announcer, his duties included reading various newscasts and war updates. He was never sent overseas to cover the war. Most of his newscasts were in the evening; as a junior announcer on the staff, he typically worked the sign-off shift.
Groucho Marx called him the “second-wittiest man on TV”
Cullen still holds the record for hosting the most game shows—23 in all. He was also a long-time pilot who served as a civilian aviation instructor during World War II.
Looking it up to be certain, he was also the breaking news announcer announcer for Eddie Murphy’s SNL Buckwheat has been shot skit. Then it went to a faux Ted Koppel from what I remember.
Is that Andy Richter destroying Wolf Blitzer?
Here's the full game transcript: http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3141
The show had to give Wolf $1000 to play with in final Jeopardy because it was a charity event.
Certainly, John Facenda of NFL Films fame. His voice-overs of players in slow-motion turned every game into a gladitorial spectacle.
“The Greeen Baaaaay Packeeeeers”
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