Don LaFontaine, the voice of “In a world…” in a zillion, billion movie trailers. We don’t know who these guys are, and they touch us in such a small but precise way. Then they’re gone, and the world seems a bit sadder.
Jerry Reed played the Snowman in Smokey and the Bandit, a film that I have a deep and inexplicablely deep love for. Part of the reason is Reed’s performance of the movie’s recurring theme song, “East Bound and Down.” And who can forget when he guest starred on Scooby Doo that one year when the show ran an hour and featured an insane collection of obscure, dead and/or fictional ‘celebrities’?
Bill Melendez was the last of three men, including Charles Schultz himself (the other, of course, was jazz composer Vince Guaraldi), responsible for the literally perfect translations of the Peanuts comic strips to at least two immortal and enduring specials, It’s the Great Pumpkin and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Melendez actually oversaw the animation and produced those cartoons. Gentlemen, your work remains as vibrant and touching forty-odd years later as they ever were. Thank you.
