Biography
Born in New York City, Wendell served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II and graduated from Fordham University with a degree in speech. He worked briefly with the DuMont Television Network before beginning his long association with NBC. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Wendell formed part of a fraternity of network staff announcers who held lifetime contracts; his colleagues were Don Pardo, Wayne Howell, Fred Facey, Bill McCord, Roger Tuttle and Howard Reig.
Wendell was a radio announcer on programs towards the end of the old-time radio era, but the majority of his announcing work was on television. He was a regular on the 1955-1956 version of The Ernie Kovacs Show, serving as the show's announcer, as well as a participant in sketches such as "Mr. Question Man" (a parody of The Answer Man). He also worked with Jack Benny, Bob Hope and other NBC personalities.
Wendell was the announcer for a number of NBC's game shows. In 1959, he succeeded Jack Barry (who was implicated in the quiz-show scandals) as emcee of Tic Tac Dough, until it was finally cancelled in October of that year. He succeeded Johnny Olson as the announcer of the syndicated To Tell The Truth from 1972–1977, after Olson left New York City to assume the job on CBS' game The New Price Is Right, based in Southern California. Wendell was also announcer for several years on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In addition, during the years when the television networks didn't broadcast 24 hours a day, Wendell anchored a five-minute summary of the day's news---the last program NBC would air before local affiliates would sign off---on which he was heard but not seen as a network hand displayed still images or illustrations related to the brief news items.
His most notable stint on television was as the regular announcer for NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, on which he appeared from 1982–1993, the entirety of the show's NBC run. He moved with Letterman to CBS in 1993, staying as announcer on the Late Show with David Letterman. He retired in mid-1995, with his last episode airing on August 18. Following a two-week hiatus, Alan Kalter succeeded him as announcer on September 4.
Before he announced for David Letterman's Late Night he was announcer on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show when Tom moved from Burbank, California to NBC in New York. Letterman's show replaced Snyder's and kept Wendell as announcer.
Wendell's last major job was as the original voiceover announcer in Old Navy's "fashion show" commercial campaign. Wendell also appeared as a TV announcer in the movie, Mr. Saturday Night, which starred Billy Crystal as comedian Buddy Young, Jr., a character Crystal originally created when he was a regular on Saturday Night Live.
He died of complications from cancer in 1999 in Boca Raton, Florida.
Read more about this topic: Bill Wendell
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)