• Los Angeles Times , Wednesday, September 3, 2008 10:15 AM

Don LaFontaine, who was known as "The Trailer King" for his work as a voiceover artist on movie trailers, has died at 68 from complications after treatment for an unspecified illness in Los Angeles. LaFontaine also did voiceover work on countless radio and network television promotional spots and commercials and was also known as "Thunder Throat," and "The Voice of God."

With a rich baritone that was once likened to the sound of someone speaking from the bottom of a well, LaFontaine dramatically narrated the movie trailers for classic films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" ("A shrieking monolith deliberately buried by an alien intelligence") and "Fatal Attraction" ("A look that led to an evening, a mistake he'd regret all his life").

LaFontaine once said that his career had been unique. "It can't be duplicated. I came into the field of movie promos just as it was being born. I had the opportunity to work in virtually every style, mostly reading copy that I had written or co-written. Many of the younger narrators of today grew up hearing me. And right or wrong, it became a sort of template for how trailers should be read."

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