Don Morrow

Don Morrow (born January 29, 1927, died October 27, 2020) was an American actor and announcer. He started his broadcast career while a student at Syracuse University on the GI Bill shortly after World War II. His first job was with Syracuse's first TV station WHEN (now WTVH) as newscaster and announcer. He heard of greener fields in Texas and in the late summer 1949 signed Dallas's 2nd TV station on the air as KBTV (now WFAA-TV). While at the station, he also graduated from Southern Methodist University. By the Spring of 1951, Morrow was working a freelance syndicated show with baseball Hall of Fame's Dizzy Dean who got Morrow to quit WFAA and come to New York where Dizzy broadcast play-by-play for the Yankees. When owner Del Webb had other plans, Diz got Morrow a job on The Liberty Broadcasting System, a Dallas based outfit with 536 radio stations across the country.

A Dallas roommate sold a show to ABC and Morrow was on network television as announcer on-camera for Personality Puzzle. Next came CBS Radio's "Fun For All" and a string of others through the decade. In 1954 he was seen on the detective series Martin Kane, Private Eye as the owner of the tobacco shop where Kane bought the sponsor's cigarettes. In 1954, he became Walter Cronkite's announcer on CBS's "The Sunday News Special". He appeared several times on the Ed Sullivan Show in comedy skits, was an on-camera announcer on The Jackie Gleason Show, was making commercials voice over and on-camera for Zest, Crest, Nabisco and others. By the end of the fifties, he had also been spokesman for four major tobacco companies and then was signed as the Camel spokesperson.

During the rest of the decade Morrow worked on such shows as Masquerade Party, GE College Bowl, Rin Tin Tin and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, he became announcer for Lowell Thomas on CBS which continued into the next decade. During the 1950s, he was the announcer for Gunsmoke, Ozzie and Harriet, The Guy Lombardo Show and many others.

His first regular network hosting job was with ABC's Camouflage (Morrow had subbed for Allen Ludden on GE College Bowl on several occasions) which led to NBC's Let's Play Post Office (1965-66) produced by Merv Griffin. Morrow also served as a fill-in announcer on Wheel of Fortune. He also hosted Science All-Stars on ABC (1964-65) which brought him together with the National Science Show winners and the leading scientists and astronauts of the era. In addition he hosted two unsold game-show pilots, Challenge (1968) and Wheeler Dealers (1973).

In the early 1970s, Morrow sold his West Hampton restaurant, moved his family to the south of Spain, and commuted to New York and Los Angeles for the next several years. In 1973, he came back on one trip, to do, among other things, an uncredited cameo role in Charles Bronson's first Death Wish. At the same time, he ran into a friend at J. Walter Thompson Advertising who put him on the Ford Motor account for the next 18 years. Business accelerated to the extent that Morrow moved back from Spain, continuing to visit the farm there over the following 30 years.

In the late 1970s, Morrow landed the job as "The Shell Answer Man", the spokesman for a series of free booklets on automobile and household tips from Shell gas stations.

Morrow continued commercial voice-overs, and also worked again on TV game shows, including Sale of the Century from 1988 to 1989, Now You See It in 1989, The Challengers in 1990 and the entertainment-oriented program Personalities during Charlie Rose's eight-week tenure on the show in the fall of 1990.

In the 1990s, Morrow landed a job with James Cameron voicing commercials for the film Titanic (1997).

Morrow's historical narrations on A&E's Biography, the History channel and other channels are heard worldwide, along with The E! True Hollywood Story and Emmy Award documentaries from NBC and PBS.

Morrow had dozens of voiceover commercials, documentaries and various other voiceover projects running worldwide. From his studio in Danbury, CT he teaches voiceover one-on-one and gives voiceover Seminars.

Don also did the announcing work for the game Heroes of Newerth.

The deer who lived in Morrow's house
The May 20, 1961 issue of TV Guide carried a short picture feature of Morrow and his star boarder at his Danbury, CT farm: a male fawn his mother had brought home the preceding fall when the deer was about six weeks old (Morrow was living on the farm pending his second marriage). The deer had been struck and stunned by a neighbor mowing a field and Morrow decided to let the deer be part of the family. His daughter Donna named him Snowflake, changing it to Romper when his white flecks disappeared. Although Snowflake/Romper was housebroken, he slept outside except on especially cold nights, when he would nudge Donna's dog off her bed. Snowflake/Romper liked dog biscuits as a treat, although his standard fare was a corn/oats/wheat mixture.

Death
Morrow died in October 2020 at the age of 93.