Don Pardo: Difference between revisions
rm per WP:MOSFLAG |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{Infobox actor voice |
{{Infobox actor voice |
||
| name = Don Pardo |
| name = Don Pardo |
||
| image = |
| image = Don Pardo '83.png |
||
| image_caption = |
| image_caption = Don Pardo in 1983 |
||
| image_size = |
| image_size = 200px |
||
| landscape = |
| landscape = |
||
| birthname = Dominick George Pardo |
| birthname = Dominick George Pardo |
||
Revision as of 00:34, 31 December 2007
Don Pardo | |
|---|---|
| File:Don Pardo '83.png Don Pardo in 1983 | |
| Born | Dominick George Pardo February 22, 1918 |
| Other names | Don Pardo |
| Occupation(s) | Voice actor, announcer |
| Notable credit(s) | Saturday Night Live Jeopardy! Wheel of Fortune The Price is Right Three on a Match Jackpot! Winning Streak |
Dominick George "Don" Pardo (born February 22, 1918 in Westfield, Massachusetts) is an American radio and television announcer. Pardo joined NBC as an in-house announcer in 1944 and remained on the network staff for the next 60 years. He is the last of the "lifetime" employees of NBC. His best-known announcing work is for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC (which he gave up after the 1999 telecast) and the television series Saturday Night Live; he has been with the show since it premiered in 1975, except for one season (1981-82), when it was announced by Mel Brandt. After "Live, from New York..." which is cried out at the end of the opening skit, Don Pardo names the cast members and musical guest(s) in a voice-over during the opening credits.
Pardo officially "retired" from NBC in 2004 and moved to Tucson. However, the producers of Saturday Night Live convinced him to continue providing the introductions for their show. In 2006, he decided to begin prerecording his announcements from a home studio in Arizona. That lasted only a few episodes before producers insisted they needed him present in Studio 8H, and he resumed flying to New York on a weekly basis to do the show. [1]
Prior to Saturday Night Live, Pardo made his mark on game shows for NBC as the booming voice of The Price is Right from 1956 until it moved to ABC in 1963. The next year, he moved over to Jeopardy!, which he announced from 1964 until the original version of the series ended in 1975. Pardo reprised that role with a cameo voiceover in "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1984 song "I Lost on Jeopardy" (a parody of the Greg Kihn Band 1983 hit song "(Our Love's In) Jeopardy"). He also announced numerous other New York-based NBC game shows such as Three on a Match, Winning Streak, and Jackpot! (all three of which were Bob Stewart productions).
In addition, Pardo has also been the announcer for WNBC-TV's Live at Five news program, NBC Nightly News, and Wheel of Fortune (during two special on-location weeks in 1988, when the show originated from New York).
Pardo was the on-duty live booth announcer for WNBC-TV in New York and the NBC network on November 22, 1963, and it was he who first announced to NBC viewers that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. (His first bulletin interrupted a local WNBC-TV broadcast of "Bachelor Father" before the entire NBC network went live with the story.) Because NBC was slow to begin videotaping the assassination coverage, for decades it was believed that Pardo's historic bulletins were lost. However, almost 40 years later an audio tape of the bulletins was discovered in a private collection.
In December 1976 on one memorable SNL episode, Pardo participated in a musical performance by Frank Zappa, reciting a verse of the song "I'm The Slime." Pardo subsequently reprised this role on the live-recorded version of the song for the Zappa in New York album (it was, however, not featured on the first release in 1978, but it appears on the 1993 CD re-release). He also provided narration for the songs "The Illinois Enema Bandit" and "Punky's Whips" (an ongoing business dispute between Zappa and his then record company led to "Punky's Whips" being removed from the 1978 album, but the song was reinstated on the 1993 CD).
In 1986, Pardo contributed to the first album in TVT Records' Television's Greatest Hits series of compilations of TV-series theme songs; his voice can be heard opening and closing the album, as if it were a real TV station's broadcast day.
Pardo is still heard during the open and close of Len Berman's "Spanning the World" segments on WNBC and Today. During the 1980s and 1990s, Pardo also recorded announcements for radio stations affiliated with The Source programming service [2] (syndicated by Westwood One). Recordings from those days are still used on some programs, such as "Ten At Ten" on KFOG-FM, San Francisco and The Bob and Tom Show.