Voices lost: Lauren Bacall and Don Pardo, RIP

Miss Bacall's image found on Wiki.

They say they always come in waves of three, the deaths of great ones. The eerie trend continues, decade after decade. As most of you know, after the shocking suicide of Robin Williams at 63, we lost Lauren Bacall at 89 this week, and then Don Pardo at 96. What a striking figure Bacall was. But, for years she had not been too active as actress: understandably, as Hollywood is classically cruel to the older female, she was lucky to be cast whenever she was. When I heard about her passing last week, I immediately flashed back to our encounter at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, when I was a production assistant on the first satellite transmission from Cannes, "Cannes '79." Want to feel old? That was the year Francis Ford Coppola won the Palme d' Or for Apocalypse Now.

 

Bob Wussler in command. File image found on the Web.

Here's the Cannes '79 official poster by Folon.

Produced by Robert Wussler's Pyramid Enterprises, a start-up for this beloved ex-president of CBS-Television (Wussler, who passed away in 2010, was also co-founder of CNN.) See his NYT obit at  
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/business/media/14wussler.html

On that show, I worked with George Hamilton, Catherine Deneuve, Kirk and Anne Douglas, and many more big names, as handler prepping the set and wardrobe and make-up for short interviews directed by Joel Banow, who had a background in TV news. In those days, you would shoot 16-millimeter film interviews, and these had to be edited into other footage at a studio. Part of my little French-American production assistant job - which I found thrilling at the time - was to hand carry the reels in film cans to the Nice airport and fly with them to Paris so the editing could take place at a subcontracted TV studio before transmitting the final cut show by satellite to New York for airing on KPIX-TV. That year, during the Cannes Festival, the French satellite operators unexpectedly went on strike. Our show did not air on time, but it did a couple of weeks later. They say all publicity is good publicity, and this one was milked. That's showbiz. I made some money, I had a fantastic time hobnobbing with the worldly in Cannes (drinks at the Hotel du Cap with Peter Sellers!?) and I dined out on my stories for years. The satellite strike story ran in the New York Times and Variety.

Oh, about Bacall: she was a diva...not very nice to Joel that day: but, let us not speak ill of the dead.

Don Pardo, who passed away today, may have been the longest-working television announcer in the business! He spent 38 seasons with Saturday Night Live! See the Hollywood Reporter:  
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/don-pardo-dead-booming-voice-720129 

Pardo, who occasionally performed in SNL skits — one was a memorable 1976 musical number with Frank Zappa — was replaced for the 1981-82 season and missed only a handful of other shows because of illness. He wanted to retire in 2004 but was told he had a lifetime contract if he chose to accept it.

                                                                          Hollywood Reporter, August 18, 2014

Photo of Don Pardo by Frazier Harrison/ Getty Images

One reason we creatives love our work is that we provide a unique service with our voices, looks, vision, and personalities, we can thrive on the temporary nature of our gigs, yet our talent can last as long as we do, even into the great beyond! RIP, Dominick George Pardo, genius son of Polish immigrants.