I can't identify the narrator, except to state that it is not the voice of
either Forsythe or Bowman. Often one must establish who it is not before
learning who it is.

DDR

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Dan Scola <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi, Dave.
>
> Thank you for the input, but unfortunately, it’s neither of them. Forrest
> Sawyer is too young, to start with. This mystery narrator, to my ear, was
> at
> least 40 around 1970. Sawyer was born in 1949, and the voices do not match.
> This narrator has somewhat of a “whiny” quality to his voice, but he
> balances it out with an unusual richness. I found a recording by Sharbutt
> from 1962, and he really produced most of his voice with his soft palate,
> giving it power but it was also rather one dimensional. He also said he
> retired in 1976. One clue is also what this narrator did. I discounted John
> Forsythe from the start because in 1978 he was a celebrity already and
> wasn’t going to get involved with narrating English courses. Later on I
> realized it wasn’t him, anyway.
>
> I’m not a voice expert by any means, but through the years I’ve become used
> to analyzing voices by ear. Not too long ago, I started watching Buck
> Privates, from 1941, with Abbott and Costello, and I heard a voice that
> sounded like this narrator. I thought I had found him. It turned out to be
> Lee Bowman, somebody whom I never heard of before. He was the right age,
> but
> after some research, I found some clips from the 1960s and 1970s, but by
> then, Bowman’s voice had changed quite a bit. He narrated “Threads of
> Glory:
> 200 Years of America in Words and Music” in 1976.
>
> As I said, this will take finding someone who was involved with this type
> of
> narration back then. My guess is that this narrator may have been a radio
> actor who for some reason, perhaps a physical handicap, did not make it to
> visual media.
>



-- 
Dennis D. Rooney
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