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| Peter Thomas |
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Media Confidential has learned that legendary narrator and pioneering voice-over Talent Peter Thomas is gravely ill.
Thomas, a former staff announcer at WCBS-TV and the CBS Network, is 90-years-of-age and apparently suffered injuries during a recent fall at his hime in Naples, Fl. He is currently a patient at a nearby nursing facility.
His wife, Stella died this past July from complications of a malignant brain tumor. In an interview during the summer with the Naples Daily News,Thomas attributes much of his career success to the help Stella gave him.
"I've done over 400 episodes of ‘Forensic Files.' Stella and I would spend hours on those scripts," he said. "We'd read them the night before and the morning before I recorded. I still hear them and can still remember her saying, ‘Oh, I liked how you said that one' or ‘I didn't like that.'"
Once, Peter said he and Stella worked extensively on a script for PBS' "Nova." When he arrived to do the recording in London, he was given a different script. He read the script over the phone to Stella before recording it.
"That just shows how much I really depended on her," he said.
Thomas was born in Pensacola, Florida, where began his career at fourteen as an announcer on a local radio show. Since the station could not pay him, due to his age, they arranged for the sponsor, Piper Aircraft, to give him flying lessons in a Piper Cub. Within just a few years, Thomas would be hosting Big Band remotes.
With the onset of World War II, he left volunteered for the United States Army in 1943, after being offered an Armed Forces Radio deferment, and served with the First Infantry Division in five major campaigns, including the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He was issued a Battle star for each of the five campaigns. He was also awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Unit French Croix de guerre, and Belgian Fourragère.
Thomas has received many awards for his work but cites, as one of his best, the Oscar won by a documentary he narrated, One Survivor Remembers. The film, produced by HBO, chronicles the personal experience of Gerda Weissman Klein, who was interned at the Nordhausen Concentration Camp when she was a teenager. Thomas' unit participated in the haunting liberation of Nordhausen.
Thomas also participated in an HBO film on the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, in which he fought with the 1st Infantry Division (United States). Thomas was also the narrator for a miniseries that ran on The Discovery Channel in 1993 entitled How the West was Lost. Thomas was the narrator for the two-hour Nova episode entitled D-Day's Sunken Secrets, broadcast May 28, 2014, just before the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings; he participated in the original D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.
Thomas has also performed voice-overs for hundreds of television commercials, including Coca-Cola, IBM, Valvoline, NBC, United Technologies, Burger King, William Beaumont Hospital and ESPN Monday Night Football Commercials.
Well-wishers can send cards and message to: Peter Thomas, The Chateau, 130 Moorings Park Drive, Naples, Florida 34105.
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