A lot of websites are noting the passing at age 85 of Dick Tufeld, the man who supplied the voice of the robot on Lost in Space. That's a great credit and I don't mean to belittle it in any way but it was, I'm guessing, about 2% of the amazing career of the man. There were probably years there where Dick had the most-heard anonymous voice in this country. He was the go-to guy for commercials, promos and especially for announcements on variety-type shows.
TV networks have been known to issue lists of "approved voices." The premise is that if you're an off-stage announcer, you more or less represent the network, especially if you're saying things like, "We'll return to our show after these commercial messages." When I produced a few variety specials for CBS in the eighties, we needed to hire someone to say things like that and we were handed such a list. It had about twelve names on it and one was Dick Tufeld's. I suspect he was on every such list issued by any network while he was actively working.
At the end of many an awards show, special or variety program, you'd hear him say over the credits, "This is Dick Tufeld speaking." He said it so often that it got to be a running gag that his name was Dick Tufeld Speaking. Once on some show, I actually heard him say, "This is Dick Tufeld Speaking speaking." And he was so adept at announcing that just with his voice, he managed to capitalize the first "speaking" and not the second.
I directed him once on an episode of the old Garfield and Friends show. This is it and it's a little bit outta sync but you'll recognize Mr. Tufeld's voice instantly…
As was the case the four or five times I worked with him, he arrived on time and did everything perfectly on every read. But unlike a few guys in his class and job description, he was utterly cooperative if asked to do it again and again and again and again. I once saw a director demand that Dick read an innocuous line about sixteen times with different inflections. Dick did so without even a twitch of complaints…and then they used the first one. They could have used any of them. He was that good and the industry mourns the loss.
Oh — one other thing about his appearance on Garfield: I couldn't resist so I had them do the end credits on that episode like this…
