Danny Dark was widely acknowledged in the commercial industry as the voice-over king. For nearly four decades, he embedded pop culture with memorable lines in advertisements for Budweiser

Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch)

Budweiser is a 5.0% abv American-style lager introduced in 1876 by Adolphus Busch and one of the highest selling beers in the United States. It is made with up to 30% rice in addition to hops and barley malt. Budweiser is produced in various breweries located around the world...

 ("This Bud's for you"), Raid

Raid (insecticide)

Raid is the brand name of a line of insecticides produced by SC Johnson, first launched in 1956.The initial active ingredient was the first synthetic pyrethroid, allethrin...

 Ant & Roach Killer ("Raid- Kills Bugs Dead") and StarKist Tuna ("Sorry, Charlie"). The trade paper Radio & Records

Radio & Records

Radio & Records was a trade publication providing news and airplay information for the radio and music industries. It originally started out as an independent trade from 1973 to 2006 until VNU Media took over in 2006, up until its final issue in 2009.-History:The company was founded in 1973 and...

 said, "Dark's distinctive voice has been heard in more award-winning commercials than any announcer in broadcast history."

Early life and career

Danny Dark was born born Daniel Melville Croskery in Tulsa. He started as a radio D.J. there as a teenager, but quickly advanced to stations in Cleveland, Miami, New Orleans, St. Louis, finally landing a 1963-66 stint as the evening DJ for KLAC in Los Angeles.

Notable voice over work

Over the course of his career, Dark was the spokesman for Keebler Cookies, Camaro, AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

, K-Mart, Texaco

Texaco

Texaco is the name of an American oil retail brand. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand....

, Armor-All, Whitman's

Whitman's

Whitman's is one of America's largest and oldest brands of boxed chocolates. Whitman's confections have been produced since 1842, originally by Stephen Whitman in Philadelphia and currently by Russell Stover Candies...

 Chocolates, Dreyer's

Dreyer's

Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of Nestlé, is a United States-based producer of ice cream and frozen yogurt had originated in 1928 as Edy's Grand Ice Cream, a Northern California business under a partnership of Joseph Edy and William Dreyer. In 1947 the partnership dissolved....

 Ice Cream, and many other Blue Chip companies. Dark was the voice of the long-running TV western Bonanza

Bonanza

Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...

, voicing their intermission commercials for the program's sponsor, Chevrolet

Chevrolet

Chevrolet , also known as Chevy , is a brand of vehicle produced by General Motors Company . Founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911, General Motors acquired Chevrolet in 1918...

. Dark was an announcer who came to be known as the "voice" of the CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 television network

Television network

A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...

 during the 1970s and the NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 television network during the 1980s and early 1990s, doing promo advertisements for night-time programming, as well as an announcer for NBC's flagship station, WNBC-TV, and the imaging voice for many of the network's affiliates and O&O stations for their local news

Local news

In journalism, local news refers to news coverage of events in a local context which would not normally be of interest to those of other localities, or otherwise be of national or international scope.-Television:...

casts.

Danny Dark voiced the role of Superman

Superman

Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

/Clark Kent

Clark Kent

Clark Kent is a fictional character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Appearing regularly in stories published by DC Comics, he debuted in Action Comics #1 and serves as the civilian and secret identity of the superhero Superman....

 for thirteen years in each of the various incarnations of Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...

's animated series Super Friends

Super Friends

Super Friends is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes, which ran from 1973 to 1986 on ABC as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup...

. He also narrated historical documentaries for the Biography series on the History Channel, including Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash

John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

: The Man in Black, and General Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee

Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....

.

Dark's only movie roles came in the 1976 film Tunnel Vision

Tunnel Vision (film)

Tunnel Vision is 1976 comedy anthology film featuring Roger Bowen, Chevy Chase, John Candy, Howard Hesseman, Joe Flaherty, Laraine Newman, Betty Thomas, Phil Proctor, Al Franken, Ron Silver, Tom Davis, Michael Overly. It was directed by Neal Israel and Bradley R...

and as an announcer in 1980

1980 in film

- Events :* May 21 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is released and is the biggest grosser of the year ....

's Melvin and Howard

Melvin and Howard

Melvin and Howard is a 1980 American comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Demme. The screenplay by Bo Goldman was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, who was listed as the beneficiary of USD$156 million in a will allegedly handwritten by Howard Hughes that was...

starring Jason Robards

Jason Robards

Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. was an American actor on stage, and in film and television, and a winner of the Tony Award , two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award...

.

Death

Dark died in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 of a pulmonary hemorrhage

Pulmonary hemorrhage

Pulmonary hemorrhage is an acute bleeding from the lung, especially in the upper respiratory tract and the endotracheal tube. When evident clinically, the condition is usually massive, associated with bleeding in other sites as well as more than one third of the lungs...

 and was interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery

Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery

The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery is a cemetery in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, California. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood....

.

External links

• Obituary in Variety
  Variety (magazine)
  Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
  
  , June 23, 2004.