Don LaFontaine, 68, the man who popularized the catch phrase “In a world where . . . ” and lent his voice to thousands of movie trailers, died Monday in Los Angeles from complications of an ongoing illness, said his agent.
LaFontaine made more than 5,000 trailers in his 33-year career. In an interview last year, LaFontaine explained the strategy behind the phrase “In a world . . . ”
“We have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting them to,” he said of his viewers. “That’s very easily done by saying, ‘In a world where . . . violence rules.’ ‘In a world where . . . men are slaves and women are the conquerors.’ You very rapidly set the scene.”
LaFontaine remained active until recently, averaging seven to 10 voice-over sessions a day working from his home with faxed scripts.
Jo Stafford, 90, the honey- voiced band singer who starred in radio and television and sold more than 25 million records with her ballads and folk songs, died July 17 of congestive heart failure at her Century City, Calif., home, her son said.
Stafford had 26 charted singles and nearly a dozen top-10 hits, her son said. She won a Grammy for her humor.
Stafford’s records of “I’ll Walk Alone,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You” and other sentimental songs struck the hearts of servicemen far from home in World War II and the Korean War. They awarded her the title of “GI Jo.”
In 1939, she was working with a group of male singers called the Pied Pipers. The group was invited to join the Tommy Dorsey band, a big attraction in the swing era.
The group’s languorous “I’ll Never Smile Again” with Frank Sinatra became the No. 1 hit for 12 weeks and sold 2 million copies. A half-century later, Sinatra remarked about Stafford, “It was a joy to sit on the bandstand and listen to her.”
Ike Pappas, 75, a longtime CBS newsman who was a few feet from presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald when he was fatally shot, died Sunday in an Arlington, Va., hospital of complications from heart disease, his family said.
A New York native, Pappas was in Dallas after John F. Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, reporting for New York radio station WNEW, when police brought the manacled Oswald into the police station basement two days later to be transferred to the jail.
He had just asked the suspect, “You have anything to say in your defense?” when someone shoved Pappas, a gunshot sounded and Oswald crumpled, mortally wounded.
“There’s a shot! Oswald has been shot! Oswald has been shot!” Pappas said on the air. “A shot rang out. Mass confusion here, all the doors have been locked. Holy mackerel!”
The person who had elbowed Pappas aside turned out to be Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who was convicted of killing Oswald.
