Tralfaz Sunday Theatre—The Wink and Alex of Tomorrow

What’s 1999 going to be like?

It’s going to have creepy music on the beach, a golden-coloured Seattle car and dad will be Wink Martindale.

And it will be narrated by Alexander Scourby.

The Philco-Ford Corporation decided to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 1967, with, among other things, a half-hour industrial film looking into the future. So, it hired the future host of “Gambit” and the future Kara of “Star Trek” (yes, Wink is married to Marj Dusay in this).

You can watch the video below but first, I want to post a little story about Scourby.

He was the voice of National Geographic Specials when I was a kid and it seems when producers wanted a narrator for a subject on anything to do with the liberal or fine arts, Scourby was the one they hired. In other words, he’d be more likely heard elucidating on the life of Debussy than calling a monster truck pull. Mind you, this was a man announcing the radio soap “Joyce Jordan, Girl Interne” in the late ‘30s.

This wire story was published January 20, 1963.

The Voice Does Commercials and Bible Classics
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK—(AP)—The world of show business, there are two Alexander Scourbys.
One is a prominent actor, a dark-haired, mature man who, if he isn't playing a weak judge, a society doctor or a. rich man with a difficult son, is likely to turn up with a crepe mustache and a remarkably accurate British, Greek, German, Mexican or Polish accent. You run into him frequently in the theater, in the movies or—mostly—on television.
The other is a disembodied voice—rich, deep, reassuring, substantial and elegant. You can't listen to television or radio for long without hearing — and recognizing — the voice.
It urges you to protect yourself with a certain mouthwash, to cover "big hurts" with a certain brand of adhesive tape and bandage, to use only a certain brand of gasoline and oil, reduce painlessly with a certain diet food, to make yourself positively irresistible with a certain perfume or kind of eye make-up.
Less frequently, but often, the voice is narrating what is inevitably a special, high-budget, high-level program. It is the creamy, mellifluous tones accompany such religious classics as "The Way of the Cross, "The Coming of Christ" and "He Is Risen." It is the warm, poised phrasing filling it the biographical details of "The World of Jacqueline Kennedy," or of Jimmy Doolittle or of Benny Goodman.
* * *

OF COURSE, the actor and the voice involve the same man, although Alexander Scourby himself admits a little sadly that his professional career sometimes seems to be going in two directions at the same time.
Speaking of his popularity as the unseen spokesman for so many commercial products, Scourby confessed:
The financial rewards are great. In fact, the money is so good it can be rather frightening for an actor. For one thing, it is kind of demoralizing to make a living without really working."
"But then when I got my call and found I had to report for makeup at 4:30 a. m. I found myself resenting it."
Scourby is frank to admit, however, that the demand for his voice has marked advantages.
"Actors always have a problem of employment," he said. "And when television picked up and went west, a lot of actors had to pack up and follow it. I didn't have to. I could still live in New York and be available for theater work."
* * *
SCOURBY KNOWS about actor's unemployment. He was born in Brooklyn where his parents, natives of Greece, ran a wholesale bakery. He emerged from college with a yen for acting but in the midst of the great depression of the 1930s.
There was little theater around, so his first post-college job was driving the family pie-wagon, delivering to restaurants. Then he was taken on as an apprentice at the Civic Repertory Theater which Eva LeGallienne had launched.
Today, Scourby's flexible voice contains no vestige of the easily-recognized Brooklyn accent.
"I've always been susceptible to accents," he said. "I went to West Virginia University for only a year and a half, and when I got back, people thought I was a southerner. After working with the repertory theater, I think it was closer to British — they were very strict about the broad A. But now. I've done so many things I think my natural speech is a sort of mish-mash."
• * *
SCOURBY MADE his Broadway debut in 1936 as the player king in Leslie Howard's "Hamlet." When it closed he made his first recordings for the American Foundation for the Blind—and has been recording for them ever since. During the years he has made full recordings of over 250 books— including three of the Bible "War and Peace," and—most recently, "Ship of Fools."
He has played in a lot of Shakespeare, some with Maurice Evans, and done all sorts of live theater jobs. Early in his career he discovered radio, and during its hey-day sometimes was playing running parts in as many as five soap operas at one time.
When television was learning how to present superior documentary shows, Scourby immediately was in great demand for the "voice-over narrator"—meaning that unseen voice.
"I'm lucky," he said. "I have a reputation as a good reader. Great actors aren't necessarily good readers, and conversely, good readers aren't necesarily good actors. There's something about facing a microphone—I remember hearing Alfred Lunt, a really great one, the first time he ever broadcast. You could tell he was frightened stiff, the way he was enunciating every syllable of every word."
• * •
THE SCOURBYS-his wife, Actress Lori March, and their daughter Alexandra—live in an apartment near Columbia University, and spend weekends at their Connecticut farm.
"Some times I wonder what I am doing here," said Scourby.
"It wasn't at all the sort of thing I wanted when I went into the theater. I wanted to be an actor — a real actor, playing lots of parts. But I don't for a minute forget how fortunate I am."

About this film, the Library of Congress says:

A whimsical yet serious-minded look into the future sponsored by the appliance and radio manufacturer. In the “1999 House of Tomorrow,” each family member’s activities are enabled by a central computer and revolve around products remarkably similar to those made by the sponsor. Power comes from a self-contained fuel cell, which supports environmental controls, an automatic cooking system, and a computer-assisted “education room.”
Note: Produced in Eastmancolor. Renowned interior decorator Paul McCobb designed the futuristic home.