George Watt Fenneman (November 10, 1919 – May 29, 1997) was an American radio and television announcer.
Fenneman was born in Beijing, China, the only child of American parents in the import-export business. He was nine months old when his parents moved to San Francisco, California, United States, where he grew up. In 1942 he graduated from San Francisco State College with a degree in speech and drama, and took a job as an announcer with a local radio station. During the Second World War he worked as a broadcast correspondent for the U.S. Office of War Information. In 1946, he moved to Los Angeles and resumed his radio career.
He is most remembered as the announcer and good-natured sidekick on the Groucho Marx comedy/quiz show vehicle, You Bet Your Life, which began in 1947 on radio and moved to television in 1950, where it remained on NBC for 11 years. Fenneman's mellifluous voice, clean-cut good looks, and gentlemanly manner provided the ideal foil for Marx's zany antics and bawdy ad-libs.
"Groucho called the male Margaret Dumont", according to Frank Ferrante, who portrayed Marx onstage in Groucho: A Life in Revue. "George took it as the highest praise. Groucho called him the perfect straight man." Fenneman was also selected because of his intelligence and ability to calculate the scores of the contestants, whom Groucho frequently encouraged to bet odd amounts, making the arithmetic difficult to keep straight on the fly during a live show. He remained friends with Marx until the latter's death in 1977.
Fenneman was one of a pair of announcers on Dragnet, sharing narration duties with Hal Gibney on radio and the original Dragnet television series, and with John Stephenson when Dragnet returned to TV in 1967. It was Fenneman's voice which announced, "The story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent." while Stephenson would be heard at the end of the episode describing the court trials and verdicts. He was also the principal commercial announcer for the radio version of Gunsmoke, frequently introducing "Matt Dillon" himself, William Conrad, who appeared out of character after the episode, and would then thank George and extoll the virtues of L&M or Chesterfield cigarettes.
He appeared on screen in the 1951 film The Thing from Another World in a substantial but uncredited role. He and his wife were neighbors of the director, Christian Nyby. A spontaneous on-set script revision convinced Fenneman his future was not in movie acting. Producer Howard Hawks took a long scientific speech away from Robert O. Cornthwaite's character Dr. Carrington, preferring to give exposition to a minor character (Fenneman). As a radio performer accustomed to reading from a script and not used to quick memorization, Fenneman stumbled over the technical gobbledegook ("We have the time of arrival on the seisomograph..."), resulting in 27 takes of the scene. In the final film, viewers can see the other actors trying not to smile as Fenneman spouts the lines. He also appeared in an obscure film, Mystery Lake. He avoided on-screen performances thereafter, except as himself, mostly in documentaries.
Fenneman also hosted two different game shows, Anybody Can Play in 1958; and a daytime offering from CBS, Your Surprise Package in 1961. In 1966, he hosted two pilots for a show called Crossword, which would later be renamed The Cross-Wits and picked up in 1975 with Jack Clark as host. He was the commercial spokesman for Lipton Tea during much of the 1960s, and in that role appeared live on The Ed Sullivan Show when the Beatles made their second U.S. TV appearance on February 16, 1964. He hosted Talk About Pictures on PBS from 1978-1982.
In 1963 he hosted an ABC Television program, Your Funny, Funny Films, a precursor to America's Funniest Home Videos. His last credit was as narrator of The Naked Monster, released posthumously in 2005.
Contrary to popular belief, George Fenneman is not the voice of the US Naval Observatory Master Clock (that distinction belongs to Fred Covington according to Demetrios Matsakis at the observatory), nor of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's WWV. According to Sean Hall, Marty Edwards is the voice of the U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock.
Fenneman married Peggy Ann Clifford in 1943 and had three children.
He died from emphysema in Los Angeles, California on May 29, 1997 at the age of 77.