Don Pardo

Don Pardo
Born	Dominick George Pardo (1918-02-22) February 22, 1918 Westfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Other names	Dom Pardo
Occupation(s)	Voice actor, announcer
Years active	1938–present

Dominick George "Don" Pardo (born February 22, 1918) is an American radio and television announcer. He is known as the voice of the long-running late night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live.

Pardo is noted for his long association with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as The Price is Right, Jeopardy!, and NBC Nightly News. He was the announcer of Saturday Night Live for all but one of its seasons. He continued his voiceover duties during the program's opening montage, several years after his official retirement from NBC.

Radio career

Pardo was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, and spent his childhood in Norwich, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island. He was hired for his first radio position at WJAR-AM in Providence in 1938. Pardo joined NBC as an in-house announcer in 1944, remaining on the network staff for the next 60 years. During World War II, he worked as a war reporter for NBC radio.

NBC television

In the early 1950s, he served as announcer for many of RCA's and NBC's closed-circuit color television demonstrations. He eventually became one of the top game-show announcers for the network.

Pardo made his mark on game shows for NBC as the booming voice of the original The Price Is Right from 1956 until it moved to ABC in 1963, then Call My Bluff. The next year, he moved 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's 1983 hit song "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.

Pardo squeezed in many other assignments at NBC, including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (until 1999), 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 and was using substitute announcers after Jack Clark's death).

Pardo was the on-duty live booth announcer for WNBC-TV in New York and the NBC network on November 22, 1963, and he was first to announce 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 NBC network went live with the story.) Because NBC waited eleven minutes to begin videotaping the coverage, it was believed for decades that Pardo's historic bulletins were lost; but, almost 40 years later, an audio tape of the bulletins was discovered in a private collection.

In January 1986, Don Pardo replaced Hal Simms as announcer on the NBC soap opera Search for Tomorrow. He was the announcer until the final episode, on December 26, 1986.

Saturday Night Live

His best-known announcing work is for the television series Saturday Night Live. His was the first voice heard on the show's premiere episode in 1975.

He has remained the program's announcer except for one season (1981–1982), when it was announced by Mel Brandt (except for the episodes performed on December 5 and December 12, 1981, when veteran announcer Bill Hanrahan briefly substituted for Brandt). After "Live, from New York...", which is cried out at the end of the opening sketch, Don Pardo announces the show's title, then names the cast members and musical guest(s) in a voice-over during the opening montage. According to Pardo, his announcing booth in Studio 8-H, from which Saturday Night Live is telecast, is almost exactly where Arturo Toscanini stood when conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Rockefeller Center from 1937 to 1950. (Toscanini's broadcasts later moved to Carnegie Hall.)

In December 1976, on one 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 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" (a 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).

Retirement

Although Pardo officially retired from NBC in 2004 and moved from Demarest, New Jersey to Tucson, Arizona, the producers of Saturday Night Live persuaded him to continue providing the introductions for their show. In 2006, he began prerecording his announcements from a home studio in Arizona. That arrangement lasted only a few episodes before producers insisted that they needed him in Studio 8H, and he resumed weekly flights to New York to do the show. On Saturday, February 23, 2008, Pardo appeared at the closing of SNL to blow out the candles of his 90th birthday cake. Upon his induction into the Rhode Island Radio Hall of Fame on May 14, 2009, Pardo indicated that the May 16, 2009, episode of Saturday Night Live would be his last. However, his voice was heard once again announcing the show's 35th season premiere, and he continued providing the voice-overs throughout the season.

He announced that for the 36th season, he would pre-record his parts from his home in Arizona rather than performing live in New York City.

External links

• Don Pardo at IMDb
• The recovery of Pardo's "lost" JFK bulletins
• The Illinois Enema Bandit lyrics inc. Don Pardo's contribution
• Punky's Whips lyrics inc. Don Pardo's contribution
• I'm The Slime lyrics inc. Don Pardo's contribution
• Video clip from 1980 featuring last moments of pre-sign off WNBC-TV news update by Don Pardo
• Video interview on WJAR Providence
• Don Pardo Archive of American Television Interview