Voice actor Don LaFontaine—whose four-word intonation “In a world where…” made him an icon before anyone knew his name—died 1 September 2008 of complications from a collapsed lung. Born 26 August 1940 in Duluth, Minnesota, his voice-over career lasted more than a third of a century, and included more than 5,000 movie trailers, 350,000 commercials, and untold thousands of television promos.
LaFontaine wrote most of his own voice-overs, according to The New York Times, and coined phrases such as “a one-man army”, “one man, one destiny”, “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no way out”, and the classic “in a world where”. It was the last which brought him name recognition as well as voice recognition, when he was used, on camera, in a Geico commercial.
Following his gradaution from high school, LaFontaine joined the Army, where he served as a recording engineer for an Army band. After his discharge, he found work with National Recording Studios in New York City, where he met his soon-to-be partner Floyd Peterson. Together, they formed a company to produce movie trailers. He only moved behind the microphone in 1965, when he was forced to fill in for another announcer to read radio spots for Gunfighters of Casa Grande. He started his own production company in 1976, and in 1978, became head of the trailer department at Paramount Pictures.
In addition to voicing trailers for dozens of genre films, he appeared as a voice actor or character actor in several genre productions, including: Ark (2004), Team Knight Rider (1998), Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction (1997), Scrooged (1988), and Time Walker (1982).
LaFontaine is survived by his wife, singer-actress Nita Whitaker, and three daughters. Whitaker said he was active until quite recently, working from his home studio and averaging seven voice-overs a day.