Don Morrow
| Don Morrow | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 29, 1927 Farmington, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupation | Announcer, actor, voiceover artist |
| Years active | 1949–present |
| Website | Don Morrow official website |
Don Morrow (born January 29, 1927) is an American actor and announcer. He has been working as a voiceover artist for more than 60 years.[1]
Early career
Born and raised in Farmington, Connecticut, Morrow started his broadcast career while a student at Syracuse University on the GI Bill shortly after World War II. His first job was with Syracuse's first TV station WHEN (now WTVH) as newscaster and announcer. He heard of greener fields in Texas and in the late summer 1949 signed Dallas's 2nd TV station on the air as KBTV (now WFAA). At the station, he graduated from Southern Methodist University. By the Spring of 1951, Morrow was working a freelance syndicated show with baseball Hall of Fame's Dizzy Dean who got Morrow to quit WFAA and come to New York where Dizzy broadcast play-by-play for the Yankees. When owner Del Webb had other plans, Dean got Morrow a job on The Liberty Broadcasting System, a Dallas-based outfit with 536 radio stations across the country.
1950–present
1950s
A Dallas roommate sold a show to ABC and Morrow was on network television as announcer on-camera for Personality Puzzle. Next came CBS Radio's Fun For All and a string of others through the decade. In 1954, he was seen on the detective series Martin Kane, Private Eye as the owner of the tobacco shop where Kane bought the sponsor's cigarettes. In 1954, he became Walter Cronkite's announcer on CBS's The Sunday News Special. He appeared several times on The Ed Sullivan Show in comedy skits, was an on-camera announcer on The Jackie Gleason Show, was making commercials voice over and on-camera for Zest, Crest, Nabisco and others. By the end of the 1950s, he had been spokesman for four major tobacco companies and then was signed as the Camel spokesperson. During the rest of the decade Morrow worked on such shows as Masquerade Party, GE College Bowl, Rin Tin Tin and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, he became announcer for Lowell Thomas on CBS which continued into the next decade. During the 1950s, he was the announcer for Gunsmoke, Ozzie and Harriet, The Guy Lombardo Show and many others.
1960s
His first regular network hosting job was with ABC's Camouflage.[2] (Morrow had subbed for Allen Ludden on GE College Bowl on several occasions) which led to NBC's Let's Play Post Office (1965–66) produced by Merv Griffin. Morrow also served as a fill-in announcer on Wheel of Fortune. He also hosted Science All-Stars on ABC (1964–65) which brought him together with the National Science Show winners and the leading scientists and astronauts of the era. In addition he hosted two unsold game-show pilots, Challenge (1968) and Wheeler Dealers (1973).
1970s
In the early 1970s, Morrow sold his West Hampton restaurant, moved his family to the south of Spain, and commuted to New York and Los Angeles for the next several years. In 1973, he came back on one trip, to do, among other things, an uncredited cameo role in Charles Bronson's first Death Wish. At the same time, he ran into a friend at J. Walter Thompson Advertising who put him on the Ford Motor account for the next 18 years. Business accelerated to the extent that Morrow moved back from Spain, continuing to visit the farm there over the following 30 years. In the late 1970s, Morrow landed the job as "The Shell Answer Man", the spokesman for a series of free booklets on automobile and household tips from Shell gas stations.
1980s and 1990s
Morrow continued commercial voice-overs, and also worked again on TV game shows and movies where he himself was the FOX, including Sale of the Century from 1988 to 1989, Now You See It in 1989, The Challengers in 1990 and the entertainment-oriented program Personalities during Charlie Rose's eight-week tenure on the show in the fall of 1990. In the 1990s, Morrow landed a job with James Cameron voicing commercials for the film Titanic (1997).[1]
Other work
Morrow's historical narrations on A&E's Biography, the History channel and other channels are heard worldwide, along with The E! True Hollywood Story and Emmy Award documentaries from NBC and PBS.
Morrow has dozens of voiceover commercials, documentaries and various other voiceover projects running worldwide. From his studio in Danbury, Connecticut, he teaches voice-over and gives voice-over seminars. He does announcing work for the games Heroes of Newerth and Puzzle Kingdoms. He has also co-authored The Forsaken Heroes of the Pacific War, about a 106-year-old friend who was the oldest living veteran of World War II.
Sources
- 1 2 Stephen Heyman, "In a World of Trailers, Unseen Stars ", The New York Times, April 10, 2009.
- ↑ "Don Morrow, Emcee of Camouflage", The Gettysburg Times, August 18, 1962.
External links
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