Ed Herlihy
Herlihy was a voice long before he was a face. He narrated newsreels for Universal-International, announced for NBC on radio and television, hosted The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour through the 1940s and into the 1950s, and served briefly as interim announcer on The Tonight Show in 1962. From the 1940s into the early 1980s he was the voice of Kraft Foods advertising, which is how an entire American generation knew him without ever learning his name. When he died in 1999, his New York Times obituary called him "A Voice of Cheer and Cheese".
His film credits are a running joke about that career, and a good one, because directors cast him as the thing he actually was. In Zelig (1983) he is a Pathe newsreel announcer. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) he is a newscaster. In The King of Comedy (1982) he plays Ed Herlihy. The earliest credit here, on Kraft Television Theatre in 1947, is billed simply as Announcer.
The rest are small parts in mid-1980s comedies: Mr. Buxton in Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Dooley in Police Academy 2 (1985), a television reporter in A Fine Mess (1986). None of them asks him to act. They ask him to sound exactly like himself, which was the entire value of a voice that had been on the air for forty years.
Movies (6)
TV (1)
Where to start with Ed Herlihy
Zelig is the one to watch for him. Woody Allen's fake documentary needs its archival narration to be beyond question, and hiring the actual newsreel man is the whole gag. The King of Comedy goes further and casts him as himself, inside a film about people who mistake television familiarity for friendship, which is a strange and perfect use of a Kraft pitchman. Who Framed Roger Rabbit gives him a newscaster, appropriately. If the broadcasting interests you more than the films, Kraft Television Theatre is where the announcing job and the sponsor met on screen. Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment are the 1980s paycheques, and skipping them costs you nothing.