I’ve always been a fan of voice-over people. And I’m not talking about voice over actors… I’m talking about the people who do voice-over narration for TV show promotions and commercials (though some, like Maurice LaMarche, does both). The most mouse voice over person was the late great Don LaFontaine, the man who made “In a World…” a movie trailer cliche. But my all-time favorite VO guy wasn’t LaFontaine… it was Ernie Anderson.
Ernie Anderson is hardly a household name, but I can state with a high degree of certainty that everyone my age has heard him at some point. For almost two decades he was the in-house announcer for ABC, and he did all the promos for their shows. Three’s Company, Happy Days, The Love Boat… Ernie told us what was coming up in every new episode. In addition to that, he did promos for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it was his voice who told the world about “an all new ship, with an all new captain and crew!”
You would think that would be cool enough, but no… He was also a horror movie host “Ghoulardi” in the 1960s, and he was the father of the great movie director Paul Thomas Anderson.
So, here’s to Ernie Anderson, who died at the age of 73 in 1997. Here’s some of his work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt7mhDDpckk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM73xuWn8u8