Actor Dick Tufeld died 24 January 2012, after surviving cancer and suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Born Richard Norton Tufeld on 11 December 1926 in Los Angeles, California, he will be remembered as the voice of the robot in the television series Lost in Space (1965-68). He also reprised that role in the 1998 movie reboot of the series.
He began as a radio announcer in the early 1950s, and then became a television news anchor in the mid-1950s on KABC-TV Los Angeles. He was voiced many commercials, including a long run as the voice of Gallo Wines.
He did voice work on three Allen Irwin series: the acting role on Lost in Space, and he was the opening announcer/narrator on both Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-66) and The Time Tunnel (1966-67).
Tufeld’s other genre roles include Space Patrol (1953), Adventures of the Road-Runner (1962), The Fantastic Four(1978), Spider-Woman (1979), Thundarr the Barbarian (1980), Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981), and Garfield and Friends (1992).
Actor Bill Mumy, who played Will Robinson on the original Lost in Space, told TMZ “Everything just caught up to him. He lost his wife a few years ago and lost his pep after that.”