10 Fun Facts About Forensic Files Narrator Peter Thomas

Everybody’s Favorite Voiceover Artist

Viewers know Peter Thomas as the narrator of Forensic Files, but his career started long before anyone had heard of high-velocity blood splatter or age-processed clay busts. Some trivia from a long (1924 to 2016) and productive life:

1. Peter Thomas voiced the 1970 commercial that declared “Tang was chosen to go to the moon with the Apollo astronauts.”

2. He considered himself lucky that his voice didn’t change as he aged. He recorded a Gettysburg audio tour in 1974 and was able to add verbiage 30 years later. His voice matched.

3. As a favor to Johnny Carson, Peter Thomas officiated at the wedding of the talk-show titan’s son Cory Carson to a Naples, Florida, native Angelica D. Carson. Johnny (below) and Peter met when they worked for the The Morning Show on CBS in the 1950s.

4. Peter Thomas postponed his own vacation to help an audio technician save his job. The sound man had messed up a Tropicana commercial recording, so Thomas did it over and never told the guy’s superiors.

5. Of all the Nova episodes he narrated for PBS, “Iceman Murder Mystery” was his favorite.

6. Although Peter Thomas spoke perfectly unaccented North American English, he had foreign-born parents — a father from Wales, a mother from England.

7. He considered the greatest innovations in voice technology to be audio tape (which could be sliced up, so one mistake didn’t mean recording from the beginning again), DAT (digital audio tape), and teleprompters affixed to the camera (instead of off to the side).

8. Don “In a World” Lafontaine (left) and Peter Thomas are considered the two best male narrators of their generation. Apparently, they weren’t rivals and liked each other’s work.

9. He won the audition for an American Express card commercial because he could say the “American Express: Don’t leave home without it” spiel in under five seconds.

10. You needn’t bother searching for Peter Thomas in the bankruptcy court records of the once-rich-and-famous. He lived below his means, invested wisely, and left a well-endowed estate. One Florida property he bought for $1 million was worth $25 million toward the end of his life.

A Naples, Florida scene with huts built over the ocean and sand in the foreground
Naples, Florida

Read more about how Peter Thomas rose from the humble son of a schoolteacher and minister to the humble voice of countless commercials and TV shows.RR

Thanks to Paul Dowling, Randy Thomas, Don Blair’s Pioneers of Broadcasting, and Dave Courvoisier of the World-Voices Organization.

The Life and Times of Forensic Files Narrator Peter Thomas

The Voiceover Artist Left His Prints Everywhere

Peter Thomas’ voice has lured me away from all kinds of good intentions: organizing tax documents, cleaning between the sofa cushions with the Dirt Devil crevice tool, going to bed early.

Peter Thomas, seen here in a Lux commercial, did on-camera work in the early days of TV

It’s not easy to describe his voice, although I’ve listened to it for a minimum of 600 collective hours. Thomas was the narrator for Forensic Files, and he’s part of the reason fans like me can’t stop rewatching all 400 episodes of the true-crime series’ 1996 to 2011 run.

Toned up. I guess what’s so inviting about his narration is that his warm, assuring voice is devoid of affectation. He speaks smoothly, although not in a “you’ll get 150 sparkling silver gem studs absolutely free with your BeDazzler” manner. And like all voice artists, he has great diction — but it’s not so crisp as to make it alienating.

“Peter Thomas is the same guy who narrated school documentaries,” says Paul Dowling, executive producer of Forensic Files. “He’s not some sleazy guy from AM radio. He makes it okay to watch.”

Indeed, something about Peter Thomas’ narration enables me to see an episode about a college student who hacked his father to death with an ax — and sleep like a baby afterward.

Randy Thomas, a voiceover artist who narrates the Oscars and Tony Awards, also admires his work on Forensic Files.

“There are some voiceover actors who think they’re doing a good job just because they pronounce the words correctly,” she says. “Peter was different. He had an inquisitive nature about so much of life, and that transferred to whatever he narrated.”

Sunshine boy. My own dream of interviewing Peter Thomas someday — and having that voice all to myself for a little while — expired when he passed away last year, but I had fun researching a bit about his life.

Randy Thomas, narrator for the 2018 Oscars, says Peter Thomas imbued his voice work with a “different sense of wonder for each project”

Thomas was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1924, to two people who enjoyed speaking aloud and enunciating well: an English teacher and a minister.

“His father told him to paint pictures with words,” says Randy Thomas (no relation, but the two were close friends).

Peter Thomas started acting in school plays as a child and, at age 13, picked up some voice work at a local radio station. A sponsor gave him flying lessons for free because he was too young to receive a real salary legally.

G.I.-normous. At 18, he took a detour, enlisting in the army and then fighting German gunfire in Normandy, France, in 1944. He earned a Purple Heart after suffering a shrapnel wound during the Battle of the Bulge.

After returning to the U.S. and marrying longtime girlfriend Stella Ford Barrineau, he worked at Memphis radio station WMC at night and went to college during the day.

His big break came when a Hamilton Watch Company executive heard Thomas’ voice on a Florida poetry program and invited him to New York City for an audition. He won the gig, and soon nationwide audiences got to hear his voice say: “The passage of time is beyond our control, but it passes beautifully when Hamilton marks the hour.”

No mere vapor. A tidal wave of offers followed. CBS hired Thomas as the New York City anchor of The Morning Show with Jack Parr. Thomas narrated medical shows and educational documentaries and did commercials for Estée Lauder, Coke, American Express (“Don’t leave home without it”), Visine, Listerine (“The taste you hate twice a day”), and Hewlett-Packard.

Thomas’ house in Florida — he returned to the state late in his career — had a recording studio

A 2004 Broadcast Pioneers documentary from Florida station METV recalled how — in the days long before TV assaulted viewers with Preparation H and Cialis commercials — Stella rebuked her husband for narrating a Vicks Mentholatum ad. She didn’t appreciate having to watch ointment rubbed onto an actor’s chest.

Plenty of more-serious work came his way. He snagged narration gigs for the PBS series Nova as well as for the History Channel — the holy grail for voice performers.

Didn’t phone it in. His association with Forensic Files began when the 30-minute docuseries was still in development. “I fell asleep on the couch one night and there was a World War II documentary on,” says show creator Paul Dowling, “and I heard this voice, and he was carrying the whole thing. It was mesmerizing.”

Thomas turned down Medstar Television’s offer for the Forensic Files job at first because he was still earning a fortune from TV commercials and other one-offs. But after some persuading, he agreed.

His approach to the gig reaffirms one of my favorite truisms about life: No matter how talented the worker, there’s no such thing as an easy job. Thomas would spend six hours rehearsing each script at home. Stella would give him feedback.

Forensic Files is on somewhere in the world at any given time,” says Randy Thomas. “There’s always the consistency of Peter Thomas’ voice behind the microphone, and he’s become the show’s brand.”

He also occasionally contributed to the show editorially.

Thomas (with Paul Dowling) at a ceremony honoring his work on behalf of WW II veterans

“If he didn’t like something I wrote, he’d say, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but can I change this?'” recalls Dowling. “And I said, ‘I can take all the help you can give.’ We never told him to just shut up and do the script, which is how most producers treat talent, and I didn’t find out until his funeral that we were the only ones who didn’t treat him that way.”

Thomas remained in demand for his work through age 90. He died at 91, on April 30, 2016, but his voice lives on — and not just on recordings. His sons, Peter Jr. and Douglas, followed him into the profession. RR


Update: Read 10 fun facts about Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.