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Don Pardo's Death
- Don Pardo
- Radio & Television
- February 22, 1918
- August 18, 2014
- Natural Causes
The life and death of Don Pardo:
He's one of those rare individuals who everyone knew just from the sound of his voice. Spending sixty years on NBC does that to a guy
Dominick George Pardo, famously "Don", was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, the son of a couple of Polish-American bakers. He grew up in New England, in Norwich, Connecticut and Providence Rhode Island. His father wanted him to join the family business, but Don was baking up some other plans.
A graduate of Emerson College in 1942, Don got his first radio gig in Providence in 1936 at WJAR. He joined NBC in 1944 and served as an announcer for the next six decades.
He made his mark on game shows. Among Don's many plum assignments on NBC, he was the original off screen announcer on "The Price is Right", from 1956 until it moved to ABC in 1963.
After that, Don was the announcer on the original version of "Jeopardy" on NBC TV.
He had several other assignments of course, including the "Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" and general on-air work, like announcing the first bulletin on NBC of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in November, 1963.
Don's best remembered by younger generations for his decades of work as the voice of NBC's "Saturday Night Live."
Even though he retired from NBC in 2004, Don continued to record the intros for SNL for the next ten years from his home studio in Arizona. In 2010, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.
Don married Catherine Lyons in 1938. They remained married until she died in 1995.
A broken hip forced Don to miss to SNL shows in 2013. And in August, 2014, he died peacefully in his sleep in his Tucson home at the age of 96. He is survived by the five children he had with Catherine.