The Voice Of John Ashley

John Ashley was a Kansas City-born actor who broke into the movies in the late 1950s in a series of low-budget melodramas, such as MOTORCYCLE GANG, HOT ROD GANG, and FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER. Handsome and blessed with a terrific speaking voice, Ashley eventually made his way to American International Pictures, where he co-starred with other young stars like Frankie Avalon and his wife Deborah Walley in frothy comedies like BIKINI BEACH and SERGEANT DEADHEAD.

Something of a self-starter who was probably getting bored with formulaic comedies and TV guest shots, Ashley went to the Philippines in 1968 to star in a series of cheap, colorful horror movies that became known as the Blood Island trilogy: BRIDES OF BLOOD, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, and BEAST OF BLOOD. More importantly, he started producing them too, and cranked out several lurid horror pictures of independent distributors like Hemisphere Pictures and Roger Corman's New World Pictures. In fact, Ashley's BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT was the first film distributed to theaters by New World.

By the end of the 1970s, Ashley had retired from acting and become a full-time producer. One of his jobs was producing THE A-TEAM for Stephen J. Cannell, who remembered Ashley's acting career when it came time to create the opening titles for the series. Not only did Ashley supply the familiar A-TEAM narration (admit it--you know it by heart), but Cannell also tapped him to narrate the opening of HARDCASTLE & MCCORMICK a year later.

In case you've always wondered who that voice was, here's John Ashley in THE A-TEAM and HARDCASTLE & MCCORMICK:





Both themes were composed by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter.

If The Crew Of The U.S.S. Enterprise Traded Places With The A-Team...

...it might look something like this...

Greatest Night Of TV Ever?

The voiceover artist is the late Danny Dark, who "played" Superman on the SUPERFRIENDS Saturday morning cartoon series of the 1970s. Growing up, Dark was "my" Superman, and whenever I read a Superman comic book, it was Dark's voice I "heard." When he wasn't voicing Superman on TV, he was NBC's #1 announcer and could be heard just about every night on show promos and reading the announcements over the closing credits. He also voiced Keebler commercials. He died about two years ago.

The preeminent TV voiceover guy had to have been Ernie Anderson. Most famous for the way he drew out the title "THE LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVE BOAT," Anderson was identified with ABC for decades. Nobody could make a TV show sound kickass like Anderson could. Here he is selling STAR TREK III in 30 seconds and making it sound like it's the best film ever made:



We're having some very nice weather in Champaign this week. I just spent two hours sitting in Cowboy Monkey's beer garden. I took a sweatshirt just in case, but didn't need it. I wore shorts and a short-sleeved T-shirt and was just fine.

Tonight was the first time I realized that the days really are getting shorter. I've been sleeping with my windows open for about three weeks now. I love air conditioning, because I really like it to be cold when I'm sleeping, but it has felt really nice with just the cool air from outdoors coming in the windows. I live on a busy street, so I get plenty of traffic noise during the night, but it doesn't bother me at all.

I have my plane ticket for L.A. next month. I'm going out to California for about a week just before Halloween. It's just partially a pleasure trip. I'm going to spend a few days with friends in Los Angeles, and then I'm going down to La Jolla where my sister-in-law is having surgery. I expect her to pull through 100%, but she and my brother are going to be out there for awhile during recovery. He's scheduled to drive back home to St. Louis at that time, while she recuperates a few more days, so it looks like I'll be roadtripping back to Missouri with him. I've never taken a road trip of that length before--my previous record is Champaign to El Paso, Texas--so it should be exhausting and hopefully interesting. More to come.

UPDATE: Holy crap, I just found an Anderson LOVE BOAT spot: