‘Thunder Throat’: the legendary story of Don LaFontaine
There are plenty of names in Hollywood history that audiences can recognise without even seeing their face, and the same can be said of the legendary Don LaFontaine, even though the majority of viewers have absolutely no idea what he looks like.
Some of the most iconic and dulcet tones in cinema belong to world-renowned stars like Morgan Freeman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery, Christopher Walken, James Earl Jones, and Alan Rickman, but they’re easy to pick out of a line-up based on their equally famous faces.
LaFontaine dedicated his career to the recording booth but still became a legend in his own right. Over the course of a career that spanned more than half a century, he recorded upwards of 5,000 voiceovers for film and television trailers, as well as an innumerable amount of televised advertisements, promotions, video games, and even the occasional pay-per-view professional wrestling event.
Does the name still not ring a bell? Then how about any trailer that kicks off with, “In a world…”? Those three words quickly became LaFontaine’s signature phrase, entering the cultural lexicon and becoming the go-to opener for any spoof or parody that sought to poke fun at ostentatious big-screen teasers.
LaFontaine got his foot in the door as a recording engineer in the early 1960s after being discharged from the military, where one of his earliest opportunities came contributing to radio ads for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. Producer Floyd Peterson knew he was onto a winner, with the pair starting a business that specialised exclusively in movie promo work.
After serving as the head of trailer production company Kaleidoscope Films, LaFontaine decided that he had the know-how to go it alone, originating the aptly named Don LaFontaine Associates in 1976. He even had a brief spell as a studio bigwig after ascending to the role of vice president at Paramount in the early 1980s, but he missed being a more hands-on presence.
Abandoning the boardroom and returning to the booth turned out to be the right call for his personal and professional happiness. Agent Steve Tisherman helped to forge the direction he’d follow until his death in September 2008 at the age of 68 by positioning him as the leading light in trailer voice work.
He was a one-man business with a multi-million dollar revenue stream, with LaFontaine recording dozens of spots per week, and no trailer for a 1970s or ’80s blockbuster feels complete unless he’s the one talking over the top of the action. Modern cinema has been sorely lacking in trailer voiceovers, but in a way, it’s fitting that the trend found itself being phased out once its most famous purveyor had passed away.
Being given the nickname of ‘Thunder Throat’ does sound fairly pornographic in isolation, but ‘The Voice of God’ and ‘The King of Movie Trailers’ were other monikers bestowed upon LaFontaine that were equally deserved and less salacious-sounding to boot.
Trailers haven’t been the same without him, but maybe it was for the best that he left behind such big shoes that no one was capable of filling them.
