Who can put a name to this face from 50s/60s TV & film?

[M'Sharak]

Someone I know was recently watching the documentary Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie and spotted the man pictured in the screengrab above acting as narrator in a clip excerpted from an older "nuclear propaganda film". He thinks he must have seen this narrator in lots of old TV shows and movies, and the man looks very familiar to me, too, but neither of us have been able to work out who this guy is.

Can anyone identify the man with the skinny tie by name or give any hints as to where else we might have seen him?

 

[Mistral]

He looks like Rance Howard to me, only younger than I'd ever seen him.

 

[propita]

Randall William Cook? I googled it. Shatner narrated a 1995 version

 

[M'Sharak]

He looks like Rance Howard to me, only younger than I'd ever seen him.

He does, kind of, but I think that even back then Rance didn't have quite that much hair. (His hairline was much like Ron's at the same age.)

Randall William Cook? I googled it. Shatner narrated a 1995 version

I suspect Randall William Cook was probably in grade school at around the time that photo was taken. The credits listed on IMDb don't appear to contain any helpful clues.

 

[Sector 7]

A Google Image Search yielded no results either.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

I spent a bit of time at TCM and YouTube today, looking up some shorts I know about related to nuclear war propaganda, etc...but none of the ones I was familiar with featured that guy. But I tried.

If you absolutely must know, I can get my classic film hounds on the job. I have a network of film friends who will pass it around via email until they figure it out - they'd consider it a personal challenge.

But I don't want to bug em if someone here can come up with it...or unless it is really important.

 

[M'Sharak]

I spent a bit of time at TCM and YouTube today, looking up some shorts I know about related to nuclear war propaganda, etc...but none of the ones I was familiar with featured that guy. But I tried.

If you absolutely must know, I can get my classic film hounds on the job. I have a network of film friends who will pass it around via email until they figure it out - they'd consider it a personal challenge.

But I don't want to bug em if someone here can come up with it...or unless it is really important.

Naah, it's not at all important. It's more curiosity than anything, really - just a case of recognizing something or someone, but being mildly annoyed by not being able to recall where that thing or person is familiar from. I don't know, this is probably something which only happens to me and a few others and bothers most people not at all, but I like being able to place stuff in context.

As far as I can tell from watching Trinity and Beyond, though, the informational film in which this narrator appeared would have been produced in or around 1956, and the included excerpt (beginning at about 62:00 in the documentary) dealt with the subject of radiation and fallout, as well as with methods of monitoring same and measuring its effects on humans. The person who forwarded the screencap to me said he thought that the narrator could easily have been a model for Sterling Hayden's General Ripper character in Dr. Strangelove, and that's not a hard thing to see - their voices and speech patterns are pretty similar (though the narrator's voice reminds me even more of James Coburn's.)

 

[Goliath]

Have you checked the credits of the film? Quite often documentaries will include a list of their sources--the films from which they took clips--in their closing credit. That might give you more to go on.

 

[M'Sharak]

Have you checked the credits of the film? Quite often documentaries will include a list of their sources--the films from which they took clips--in their closing credit. That might give you more to go on.

I wouldn't be surprised if that were also true of this film, but the copy I've been viewing is one which was posted online and unfortunately whoever uploaded it amputated the credits in the process. I might have to go poking around and see whether I'm able to find another which includes that handy, informative bit at the end.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I think it might be Reed Hadley. The archival footage probably came from Operation Ivy.

 

[M'Sharak]

I managed to locate online another copy of Trinity and Beyond which includes the credits. However, they give only the names of film archives which served as primary and secondary sources for footage, and not the titles of individual films or names of those involved in producing them. Oh, well.

I think it might be Reed Hadley. The archival footage probably came from Operation Ivy.

Small difficulties: Reed Hadley (see images) doesn't physically resemble our narrator very closely and, though footage from that film does appear to have been used in Trinity and Beyond, Hadley's narration for Operation Ivy is pretty plainly not in the same voice or delivery as that of our unidentified narrator.

 

[propita]

He looks like Rance Howard to me, only younger than I'd ever seen him.

He does, kind of, but I think that even back then Rance didn't have quite that much hair. (His hairline was much like Ron's at the same age.)

Randall William Cook? I googled it. Shatner narrated a 1995 version

I suspect Randall William Cook was probably in grade school at around the time that photo was taken. The credits listed on IMDb don't appear to contain any helpful clues.

Oops! That's a lesson. Don't just believe google without further investigation.

 

[M'Sharak]

Randall William Cook? I googled it. Shatner narrated a 1995 version

I suspect Randall William Cook was probably in grade school at around the time that photo was taken. The credits listed on IMDb don't appear to contain any helpful clues.

Oops! That's a lesson. Don't just believe google without further investigation.

Oh, definitely - always double-check, at minimum.

Cook did do voice work in the 1995 documentary, though - I'm guessing he supplied narration for old newsreel footage which originally had none or read new lines to replace the original narration on some clips. It's just that the segment I'm interested in retained the original narration provided by the guy in the picture.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I think it might be Reed Hadley. The archival footage probably came from Operation Ivy.

Small difficulties: Reed Hadley (see images) doesn't physically resemble our narrator very closely and, though footage from that film does appear to have been used in Trinity and Beyond, Hadley's narration for Operation Ivy is pretty plainly not in the same voice or delivery as that of our unidentified narrator.

Oh, well. They both have big ears, anyway.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Naah, it's not at all important. It's more curiosity than anything, really - just a case of recognizing something or someone, but being mildly annoyed by not being able to recall where that thing or person is familiar from. I don't know, this is probably something which only happens to me and a few others and bothers most people not at all, but I like being able to place stuff in context.

As far as I can tell from watching Trinity and Beyond, though, the informational film in which this narrator appeared would have been produced in or around 1956, and the included excerpt (beginning at about 62:00 in the documentary) dealt with the subject of radiation and fallout, as well as with methods of monitoring same and measuring its effects on humans. The person who forwarded the screencap to me said he thought that the narrator could easily have been a model for Sterling Hayden's General Ripper character in Dr. Strangelove, and that's not a hard thing to see - their voices and speech patterns are pretty similar (though the narrator's voice reminds me even more of James Coburn's.)

Well, I get why you want to place him - I'm that way also, when I get a bug about something like this.

I actually don't recall seeing the guy before...but then, while I'm into classic film, most of my emphasis is on the 20's thru the 40's...and I haven't watched that much 50's scifi-ish sort of stuff, except for the really big movies in that genre.

I see what you're saying about Sterling Hayden though...