Phil Tonken
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Phil Tonken (born Philip Simon Tonken; April 13, 1919 – February 4, 2000 in Washington, D.C.) was an American radio and television producer, announcer and voice-over artist.
Career
Tonken was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a graduate of City College of New York (where he majored in public speaking)[1][2] and served in the United States Army during World War II. He started with the Mutual Broadcasting System in the mid-1940s as an announcer via its New York City outlet, WOR radio, announcing on such shows as Passport to Romance, The Mysterious Traveler, High Adventure and Quiet, Please.
After WOR ended its long-time affiliation with Mutual in 1959, Tonken was among many New York-based Mutual staff announcers (also including Carl Warren, Russ Dunbar, Frank McCarthy and Ted Mallie) who stayed on with the station. For a few years, he hosted a Sunday morning program on WOR, Hyacinths and Biscuits, which featured poetry readings and little vignettes. By the 1970s Tonken had moved on to the TV outlet, WOR-TV (now
Besides his long association with WOR, Tonken was a
Tonken's distinctive modulated
Death
Tonken died of pancreatic cancer in Washington, D.C., aged 80.
References
- ^ 115 AT CITY COLLEGE IN HONORS COURSES; Undergraduates Enrolled in 17 Subjects Exceed Last Semester by 24 - ALL DOING SPECIAL WORK - Beta Gamma Sigma Admits 23 Members From the School of Business - The New York Times, March 26, 1939.
- ^ 81 AT CITY COLLEGE IN HONORS COURSES; Undergraduates Are Enrolled in 18 Classes for Intensive Specialized Work - 13 DOING CITY RESEARCH - They Are Assigned to Projects Under a Plan Devised by Commissioner Herlands - The New York Times, December 18, 1939.
- ^ "Jean Shepherd Show, the". Archived from the original on September 11, 2008. Retrieved July 13, 2006.
- ^ "The Space Age/The Age of Reliability". 317x.com. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
- ^ [1] Archived September 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ [2] [dead link]
External links
- Phil Tonken at IMDb
- Phil Tonken radio credits
- Obituary in The Washington Post, February 13, 2000.
- The Planet Man, Part 1
- The Planet Man, Part 2
- 1982 WOR-TV sign-on by Phil Tonken
- Digitally Obsessed review of Cleopatra (1963) DVD release
- 1979 Nickelodeon promo hosted by Phil Tonken