- Phil Tonken
Phil Tonken (born Philip Simon Tonken on
April 13 ,1919 inHartford, Connecticut – diedFebruary 4 2000 inWashington, D.C. ) was an American radio andtelevision producer ,announcer and voice-over artist.Tonken was a graduate of
City College of New York and served in theUnited States Army duringWorld War II . He started with theMutual Broadcasting System in the mid-1940s as an announcer via itsNew York City outlet, WOR radio, announcing on such shows as "Passport to Romance", "The Mysterious Traveler ", "High Adventure" and "Quiet, Please ".After WOR ended its long-time affiliation with Mutual in 1959, Tonken was among many New York-based Mutual staff announcers (also including Carl Warren, Russ Dunbar, Frank McCarthy and
Ted Mallie ) who stayed on with the station. For a few years, he hosted a Sunday morning program on WOR, "Hyacinths and Biscuits", which featured poetry readings and little vignettes. By the 1970s Tonken had moved on to the TV outlet, WOR-TV (nowWWOR-TV ), handlingstation identification s, promos, bumpers and program introductions, up to his retirement from the station in 1989.Besides his long association with WOR, Tonken was a
narrator for FoxMovietone News in the 1950s and 1960s, and also was announcer for a 15-minute syndicated afternoon radioscience fiction program, "The Planet Man", which was in the tradition of older sci-fi radio shows such as "Buck Rogers ", "Flash Gordon " and "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet ". The show was produced by New York City-based Palladium Radio Productions in 1952 and aired through 1953. Seventy-eight episodes were produced, all but two of which are in existence today. Besides Tonken, only two other people were known to have participated:organist Jon Gart and voice artist Joseph Boland, who played therobot characters. The rest of the cast remains a mystery to this day.Tonken's distinctive modulated
baritone voice – once described byJean Shepherd as sounding like "a combination ofKing Kong , the organ at Westminster Cathedral, and wind whistling through Mammoth Cave" [http://www.spartaotr.com/Research-Logs/ShowDescriptions/J/Jean%20Shepherd%20Show,%20The%20-%20Show%20Descriptions.html] – was also heard in two feature films, "The Secret of Magic Island" (a 1964English language release of a 1956 French movie called "Un fée... pas comme les autres") and "In Search of Bigfoot" (1975). In addition, for many years he didradio commercial s for different products and services, including a long-running ad campaign forBarron's Magazine , as well as voice-over work for corporate and other clients [http://www.317x.com/albums/v/variousspaceage/card.html] , [http://www.ascendantimage.com/personnel_roster.htm] . In his final years, he did some narrations foraudiobook s that were put out by "Outdoor Life " magazine [http://evans.evpl.org:90/kids/0,1899,1953,2041/search/tClassic+storybook/tclassic+storybook/-3,-1,0,B/frameset&FF=tclassic+stories+of+the+great+outdoors+sound+recording+series++++1+v++++1&1,1,] .Tonken died of
pancreatic cancer inWashington, D.C. , aged 80.References and external links
*imdb name|id=0867343|name=Phil Tonken
* [http://radiogoldindex.com/cgi-local/p3.cgi?ArtistName=Tonken,+Phil&ArtistNumber=31280 A partial list of Phil Tonken's radio announcing credits]
*Obituary inThe Washington Post , February 13, 2000.
* [http://www.radioarchives.org/sets/PC23.htm "The Planet Man", Part 1]
* [http://www.radioarchives.org/sets/PC24.htm "The Planet Man", Part 2]
* [http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/1411/ 1982 WOR-TV sign-on by Phil Tonken]
* [http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/showreview.php3?ID=1086 Digitally Obsessed review] of "Cleopatra" (1963) DVD release
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