Don Pardo and SNL

[Stanislav]

Don Pardo has been the voice of Saturday Night Live since its inception. I'm curious -- does anyone know how and why Don got the gig? Did late-night weekends just happen to be part of his regular shift when the show started out, or did Lorne Michaels or NBC specifically choose him?

 

[bpatrick]

I'll have to leave it to somebody else to
answer your question. I'm not sure late-
night weekends was part of Pardo's shift,
since the predecessor to SNL was "Tonight
Show" reruns. Perhaps it's the anomaly of
the older announcer surrounded by young
performers (think Bill Wendell as David Letterman's
announcer).

I also thought Don Pardo was off SNL for about
a year, about the time of the disastrous 1980-81
season.

 

[Stanislav]

I'll have to leave it to somebody else to
answer your question. I'm not sure late-
night weekends was part of Pardo's shift,
since the predecessor to SNL was "Tonight
Show" reruns.

What I meant was, NBC/WNBC would have had an announcer available whenever they were on the air, in case of a technical breakdown, bulletin, etc. Maybe Pardo was on call late weekends anyway, so they just figured to have him do the announcing for the new live show.

 

[radioman148]

I'll have to leave it to somebody else to
answer your question. I'm not sure late-
night weekends was part of Pardo's shift,
since the predecessor to SNL was "Tonight
Show" reruns.

What I meant was, NBC/WNBC would have had an announcer available whenever they were on the air, in case of a technical breakdown, bulletin, etc. Maybe Pardo was on call late weekends anyway, so they just figured to have him do the announcing for the new live show.

In any event, it was a good move.

 

[RyanHoward]

Don Pardo was fired as the SNL announcer after that 1980-81 disaster. Mel Brand, one of the other
NBC announcers at that time, took over for Pardo in the 1981-82 season. Pardo returned the next
season(1982-83), because many SNL fans demanded it. Pardo has been the show's announcer ever
since.

 

[wbhist]

Don Pardo was fired as the SNL announcer after that 1980-81 disaster. Mel Brand, one of the other NBC announcers at that time, took over for Pardo in the 1981-82 season. Pardo returned the next season(1982-83), because many SNL fans demanded it. Pardo has been the show's announcer ever since.

Mel Brandt (that's the proper spelling) announced all but two shows in the 1981-82 season. The exceptions were Dec. 5, 1981 and Dec. 12, 1981 - when the then-"Voice of NBC News," Bill Hanrahan, was at the mic.

However, as to one of the questions: Mr. Pardo had begun to handle the local WNBC-TV night shift on some non-SNL nights after the mid-1970's. There is a clip on the Fuzzy Memories site (which mainly pertains to Chicago TV) of Mr. Pardo reading WNBC's sign-off news update on the morning of March 22, 1980, per:
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/screen.php?c=1061
Prior to that, he was generally on duty in the daytime. As was evident on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963 when the first bulletins of President Kennedy being shot in Dallas came in (a lucky soul in New York made an audio tape recording of Mr. Pardo's bulletins as transmitted by WNBC on that fateful day). This was the period in-between the original Bill Cullen Price Is Right moving from NBC to ABC, to the premiere of the Art Fleming Jeopardy!

On the nights Mr. Pardo did SNL, Arthur Gary and John Clarke (in the early years) alternated in manning the WNBC announcing booth, probably others as well (such as Bill Rippe).

 

[cspotrun]

i remember an NBC announcer in the 60's (i think he identified himself as Don Rickles)... am i imagining things?

 

[oldiesfan6479]

i remember an NBC announcer in the 60's (i think he identified himself as Don Rickles)... am i imagining things?

Definitely, you hockey puck! ;D Wait, that's the other Don Rickles.

The Burbank-based booth announcer was formally known as Donald Rickles
(to distinguish himself from the comedian), however he did ID himself on air
--at least some of the time--as Don Rickles.

One of the shows his voice intro'd and outro'd was NBC Saturday Night At
The Movies.

 

[radioman148]

I didn't realize that Don Pardo is 91 years young. He retired to Tucson, but flies weekly to New York for his SNL duties.

 

[Legend City]

Don Pardo is one of two people that NBC offered a lifetime contract to.

Bob Hope being the other.

Also, I saw Don in an episode of 30 Rock a few weeks ago, he looks great.

 

[radioman148]

>> Also, I saw Don in an episode of 30 Rock a few weeks ago, he looks great>>

That's good to hear. Don Pardo is one of those guys that everybody likes.

 

[wbhist]

i remember an NBC announcer in the 60's (i think he identified himself as Don Rickles)... am i imagining things?

Definitely, you hockey puck! ;D Wait, that's the other Don Rickles.

The Burbank-based booth announcer was formally known as Donald Rickles (to distinguish himself from the comedian), however he did ID himself on air--at least some of the time--as Don Rickles.

One of the shows his voice intro'd and outro'd was NBC Saturday Night At The Movies.

Actually, Mr. Rickles was with NBC on the West Coast from 1950 until his death in 1985. The 'tv-signoffs.com' website has a page of KNBC sign-offs (http://www.tv-signoffs.com/KNBC_1981.htm). One was from July 4, 1981, with ex-nightclub singer (and Stan Freberg Show regular) turned fellow booth announcer Peggy Taylor handling the honors; the other was Mr. Rickles himself, from Sept. 27, 1981. (Why mainstay Don Stanley and the network's only other African-American announcer outside of Fred Facey, Victor Bozeman, weren't included in any sign-offs is beyond me. Especially since a YouTuber who was subsequently yanked twice, each time under another name, had two different Bozeman sign-offs. All four announcers handled NBC Saturday Night at the Movies over its long run.)

 

[cspotrun]

i remember an NBC announcer in the 60's (i think he identified himself as Don Rickles)... am i imagining things?

Definitely, you hockey puck! ;D Wait, that's the other Don Rickles.

The Burbank-based booth announcer was formally known as Donald Rickles (to distinguish himself from the comedian), however he did ID himself on air--at least some of the time--as Don Rickles.

One of the shows his voice intro'd and outro'd was NBC Saturday Night At The Movies.

i wonder who came first, Don Rickles the comedian, or Don Rickles the announcer, and how did they square this with between the two?
and....has anyone ever seen the two of them together??


Actually, Mr. Rickles was with NBC on the West Coast from 1950 until his death in 1985. The 'tv-signoffs.com' website has a page of KNBC sign-offs (http://www.tv-signoffs.com/KNBC_1981.htm). One was from July 4, 1981, with ex-nightclub singer (and Stan Freberg Show regular) turned fellow booth announcer Peggy Taylor handling the honors; the other was Mr. Rickles himself, from Sept. 27, 1981. (Why mainstay Don Stanley and the network's only other African-American announcer outside of Fred Facey, Victor Bozeman, weren't included in any sign-offs is beyond me. Especially since a YouTuber who was subsequently yanked twice, each time under another name, had two different Bozeman sign-offs. All four announcers handled NBC Saturday Night at the Movies over its long run.)

 

[wbhist]

i wonder who came first, Don Rickles the comedian, or Don Rickles the announcer, and how did they square this with between the two?
and....has anyone ever seen the two of them together??

In terms of first prominence, the announcer came first; but once the comedian came on the scene, the announcer "formalized" his name.

As for the two of them: It's funny you should ask. They probably knew each other in some way, since Rickles the comedian had been to NBC Burbank many times (i.e. as star of CPO Sharkey, recurring guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and so on), and Rickles the announcer did some Carson sketches (I seem to recall he was the announcer on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite parody just prior to Cronkite's retirement, where Carson did a wicked impersonation). Which leads to this point: One night in 1978, Rickles the comedian was a guest on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show. The next night, Snyder had Rickles the announcer on for about ten minutes, as Snyder thought it was funny that there were two guys with the same name. Anyway, in that 10-minute stretch Snyder and Rickles the announcer played a then-new electronic board game from Milton Bradley called "Simon." Evidently, Snyder was in his second Burbank run with the show at the time (his first, in 1973-74, had another Burbank announcer, Frank Barton, handling such duties).

 

[cspotrun]

does NBC or the others even have "staff" announcers anymore? what an easy gig that must be!

 

[wbhist]

does NBC or the others even have "staff" announcers anymore? what an easy gig that must be!

Sad to say, no. It's pretty much all DSL'd V/O's from five to ten voices used by every station in the country.

The closest one could get today is at ABC, where Bill Rice still handles World News with Charles Gibson, and Barbara Korsen is the V/O for America This Morning.

 

[kirkiefan]

Don Pardo is one of two people that NBC offered a lifetime contract to.

Bob Hope being the other.

Also, I saw Don in an episode of 30 Rock a few weeks ago, he looks great.

Check out the You Tube interview of Don Pardo...being just himself...without his on- air persona. He doesn't look his age. My mother is the same age as Don and doesn't come close to how healthy and young he looks and sounds.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TVLEGENDS

Click on "Don Pardo-Archive Intrerview" (8 parts)

 

[LKellerIII]

Don Pardo is one of two people that NBC offered a lifetime contract to.

Bob Hope being the other.

Also, I saw Don in an episode of 30 Rock a few weeks ago, he looks great.

Check out the You Tube interview of Don Pardo...being just himself...without his on- air persona. He doesn't look his age. My mother is the same age as Don and doesn't come close to how healthy and young he looks and sounds.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TVLEGENDS

Click on "Don Pardo-Archive Intrerview" (8 parts)

Geez - make us work for it, kirkiefan.

Here's the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssflP0DAXf4

Yes - Dominick Pardo (real name) looks very healthy (he explains the change to "Don"). He must be in very good health considering his voice is still so strong. A lot of octogenarians lose the strength in their voices well before the body gives out - like Paul Harvey in his last few years.

His career started in the radio era - well before the advent of television.

 

[wbhist]

And Mr. Pardo is the only surviving member of the famed group of New York NBC staff announcers to still be working. Roger Tuttle and Vic Roby are still around, but they retired a long time ago.

 

[radioman148]

Don Pardo is one of two people that NBC offered a lifetime contract to.

Bob Hope being the other.

Also, I saw Don in an episode of 30 Rock a few weeks ago, he looks great.

Check out the You Tube interview of Don Pardo...being just himself...without his on- air persona. He doesn't look his age. My mother is the same age as Don and doesn't come close to how healthy and young he looks and sounds.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TVLEGENDS

Click on "Don Pardo-Archive Intrerview" (8 parts)

Geez - make us work for it, kirkiefan.

Here's the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssflP0DAXf4

Yes - Dominick Pardo (real name) looks very healthy (he explains the change to "Don"). He must be in very good health considering his voice is still so strong. A lot of octogenarians lose the strength in their voices well before the body gives out - like Paul Harvey in his last few years.

His career started in the radio era - well before the advent of television.

Good interview and he still looks great.