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.
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
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.
How did Forensic Files become the I Love Lucy of true-crime shows — with reruns on every day, everywhere from Montreal to Melbourne? The half-hour series has been compelling fans to procrastinate on their housework and homework and gym schedules for two decades.
Paul Dowling with his daughter, Brae
Since starting this blog last year, I’ve used it to answer lingering questions about specific Forensic Files episodes. With this post, I hope to solve some mysteries about the series as a whole.
Executive producer Paul Dowling, whose Medstar Television made all 400 episodes, allowed me to interrogate him during a phone call:
Forensic Files is shown in 142 countries — why are overseas viewers so interested in U.S. crimes? In many countries, cases aren’t covered in the media the way they are here.
Often the laws are different from American laws. In Great Britain, there is confidentiality until the case is decided. The crime files aren’t open the way they can be in the U.S. Same thing in Canada — you don’t learn about someone being arrested for rape or murder before the case is decided. And if he’s exonerated, you never know about it.
That can give people in other countries the wrong idea about the U.S. Brazil has a murder rate 3x higher than ours. Everyone has guns except for innocent law-abiding people, and when bad guys come to the door, they can’t defend themselves. And then they see American television and think the crime rate is much higher in the U.S.
There was a rape and murder in Brazil in front of 12 people and no one testified. People in Brazil asked me whether I’m afraid to walk the streets in the U.S. I said no, I’m afraid here.
When I was in Paris, I was told to dress like a bum [to prevent robbery].
How do you pack the whole story into 30-minute episodes?We have 22 minutes. It’s like a Broadway musical: Every line of that song has to move the story along.
As you are creating the story, you don’t think, “How will I write this?” You think, “How will I say this?”
You can tell a lot with the pictures you use. If we show a girl holding a fish [that she caught], it says something about who she was.
For every story we did, all 400, before the show aired, I sat down with three people and told them the story. It enabled me to see how the story worked. If their eyes glazed over, I knew the story was going too slowly.
It’s like campfire storytelling — if you want to keep boys and girls awake, you have to tell a good story.
How is it contending with the pressure for Nielsen ratings? Imagine you’re doing a Broadway musical and, at any moment, the audience can stay right in their same seats and have their choice of switching to 500 other musicals.
That’s TV.
TV producers are not evaluated on the value of their show — or how many people watch it. They are evaluated on how many viewers watch the ads during breaks.
You have to have a show that people are emotionally tied to so that they are afraid to get up.
Chloe (left, with pal Kimber) often visited the studio behind the scenes
How do you keep viewers in their seats?When I started the show on TLC in 1996, they wanted us to use teasers. I said no: The show should provide the incentive for viewers to come back. Toward the end of Jeopardy, when they come back from the break, Alex goes right into the Final Jeopardy question — there’s no recap. People don’t want to miss that question.
Viewers of Forensic Files want to know who killed that guy. That’s why you can’t open the show with any hint of who did it.
When we interviewed a killer on camera, we would go to the prison with our own [street] clothes for him to wear. That way, viewers don’t know yet that he did it.
We also use the passive tense in scripts, even though writers are taught not to in school. The passive tense lets you put information out there without saying who did it.
And we also don’t use big fancy words if there’s no need. A screenwriter had me look at a script once, and I said, “What does this word mean? I have two college degrees and I don’t know.” If you were at a picnic or dinner party and someone used that word, how would it make you feel?
Why do you interview the murder victims’ mothers and fathers separately — even if they’re still married? If you have two dogs in the house, there’s always one dominant one. Likewise, sometimes people say things in front of you they wouldn’t say in front of their spouse. There are interview tricks that work with one person but not two at the same time. People are often uncomfortable with silences, so sometimes they’ll blurt out something they wouldn’t [with a spouse present].
A lot of true-crime series show victims’ family members in tears. Why doesn’t Forensic Files? Because it’s manipulative. There are techniques TV producers use to make a person cry. And the viewer feels sorry for the person and gets mad at the TV show for subjecting that person to heartache.
And oftentimes it’s a year or more after the crime, so people are more composed.
We give murder victims’ families a cleaned-up version of the episode they’re in.
You mean a version without graphic footage of wounds, autopsies, etc.? Yes, we tell them that this is the version they’ll want to watch and show their friends.
You recently tweeted that your dog Chloe had passed away at age 15. How was she involved in the show? She used to come in the editing room with us, next to the editor. I was working so hard that I wasn’t home a lot, and my kids would come in with sleeping bags and pizza and the dog would eat pizza behind our backs.
Chloe was here when we did reenactments with German shepherd-style attack dogs. She started running in circles and getting bent out of shape.
So you used real dogs and cats in the reenactments?Yes, and we had a trained squirrel and homing pigeons and a kangaroo once.
What about reenactments of vehicular accidents — did you use stock footage?No. Every crash you see on Forensic Files is something we created. We did a show about boat crashes, and we bought boats. We use cars that are the same model and color [as those in the real accidents]. Some movies edit crashes and fast-forward to a stock shot of the outcome. Forensic Files shows crashes without an edit.
With crashes, you can’t have gasoline in the cars — you don’t want explosions. So sometimes you have motorized pushers. But you have to be fair as far as the speeds used, so a defense attorney doesn’t come back and say to you, “Hey, the real crash was 30 mph, but the show’s was 70 mph.”
Doesn’t all that make accident reenactions awfully expensive?Yes, but there was never a budget limit for re-creations. I never wanted anyone to be hurt in an accident re-creation and to have the director say afterward, “Well, I only had $50,000.”
Were there any episodes that chilled you to the bone, that you couldn’t forget after you went home?Yes, if we hadn’t done one particular episode, three people would be in prison for something they didn’t do. It was for the Norfolk rape and killing of Michelle Moore-Bosko in 1997, and these three people didn’t do it. Someone else confessed to the crime, and the prosecutor wouldn’t act.
Tim Kaine was governor of Virginia then, and he saw the episode [“Eight Men Out,” 2001] and had the state police reinvestigate.
I read that “Bad Blood” — the story of a woman raped by a doctor (John Schneeberger) while she was unconscious — was your favorite episode of Forensic Files. Why? If a forensic hall of fame existed, that victim would belong in it.
The doctor’s DNA didn’t match the rapist’s. The victim was sure the hospital was being paid off to throw the tests or something. So she broke into the doctor’s things and got his Chapstick. She paid for a DNA test with her own money, and it matched the DNA from the rape.
It turned out the doctor had implanted a plastic tube into his arm with somebody else’s blood and was having that blood tested.
The doctor’s wife had been saying on TV that this woman was a slut. And then the wife’s daughter from another marriage who lived with them told her mother that the stepdad [Schneeberger] had been drugging and raping her.
Paul Dowling at the 2016 Mipcom trade show in Cannes. A German network licensed Forensic Files for 10 years because “there are people who aren’t born yet who’ll want to see it”
After talking to various people who watch Forensic Files, I haven’t really been able to identify a demographic pattern. Have you? One thing we know is that a lot of women watch the show for safety reasons — knowledge of safety they can pass along to their daughters.
Can you share any safety tips?We don’t get into victim-shaming, but we do show things that the victims shouldn’t have done regarding situational awareness.
Some girls and women don’t know that there are predators at bars and clubs casing them out. A predator will watch for things like two women walking in together late. He knows that later in the evening they will have parked farther away. So when they’re ready to leave, if one stays and the other goes out to get the car and drive it around, the predator will follow her out to the car.
I tell my daughter and her friends what the FBI says: When you go to your car, have your keys in your hand. If someone with a gun comes up and says to get in the car, throw your keys and purse in one direction and run in the other. The bad guy isn’t expecting this, so he thinks, “I can get the money and car instead of going after her.”♠
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:
with the Apollo astronauts.”
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.
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.
