Image via Naples Daily News. Photo credit: Erik Kellar/Staff.
Iconic narrator and voice-over artist Peter Thomas has died at the age of 91. Best known for narrating TLC‘s The Forensic Files, he most recently worked on the Changing Seas TV show (2009 – 2014), from WPBT2 in Miami, Florida.
Hist other TV series work includes Nova, Mobsters, Biography, Empires of Industry, Modern Marvels, Naked Planet, and How the West Was Lost. He also served as cinematographer on one 1993 episode of that series, “A Good Day to Die.”
Here is more from Naples Daily News:
Peter Thomas, 91, a voice-over icon and World War II veteran, died Saturday, nearly two years after he lost his wife and high school sweetheart, Stella Barrineau Thomas.
His distinctive vocal cords made him a part of Americana, but locally Peter Thomas became famous for his humanitarian heart.
“He was loved by so many people,” said Peter Thomas Jr., the 65-year-old son who was by his father’s side in Naples when he passed, along with Peter Thomas’s two other children, Doug Thomas and Elizabeth Joyoprayitno.
During a career that spanned seven decades, Peter Thomas lent his smooth and silky baritone to everything from commercials to documentaries, his most well-known work being the narrator of “Forensic Files.” He was a radio announcer, a newspaper reporter, television anchor for CBS New York and finally, a voice-over actor.
A family man
Born in Pensacola to a Presbyterian minister, Peter Thomas had a strict upbringing, but he credited it as instrumental to his future career. In a 2014 interview, Peter Thomas said his Welsh father required him to read and memorize Bible passages, and encouraged him to paint mental pictures of words while speaking.
In high school, Peter Thomas started reading poetry and news on the local radio station. That’s when he met Stella. After spotting her at a school dance, he began to woo Stella by dedicating a song and poem to her on his show. They began dating.
Stella and Peter Thomas were married on June 29, 1946, and raised three children together in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The couple purchased a home in Naples in 1966 on a whim during a vacation, but they didn’t move to Southwest Florida permanently until 1985, as Peter Thomas continued to travel extensively for his career.
Enjoy these clips of Mr. Thomas’s work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsFtEsjzk_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WNxzvBO7uM
We invite you to share your memories of Mr. Thomas and his enduring career, below.
In my childhood he made the show forensic files come alive, I could
pick his voice out of some of his other shows he narrated for like
Modern Marvels for example. It was my binge show back before
that was a thing. I’d sit and watch a marathon of forensic files.
I remember as a kid trying to copy his voice to trick those over the phone.
Rest In Peace! I only today found out he died but man he was 91, he had
a full life and helped so many people who knew him. Truly a good man indeed.
He could have read the”phone book” and I would have loved it! Thank you for your service and thank you for all those wonderful works called forensic files!! Rip