Ken Roberts (announcer)
| Ken Roberts | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Saul Trochman February 22, 1910 New York, New York |
| Died | June 19, 2009 (aged 99) New York, New York |
Ken Roberts (February 22, 1910 – June 19, 2009) was an American radio and television announcer known for his work during the Golden Age of Radio and for his work announcing the daytime television soap operas The Secret Storm, Texas and Love of Life, each for a two-decade span.
Roberts was born on February 22, 1910 in Manhattan as Saul Trochman and grew up in The Bronx. His father, Nathaniel, an insurance salesman and English tutor from Latvia, and his mother, Fanny Naft, from present-day Ukraine, were both Jewish immigrants to the United States. Roberts attended DeWitt Clinton High School. He briefly attended law school and worked in Fiorello H. La Guardia's law office as an intern, but quit the unpaid position after the firm wouldn't cover his bus fare. He changed his name after entering the radio business so that it would not "sound so Jewish".
His first announcing job was at WMCA in New York lasting three weeks. Next at WLTH in Brooklyn. In an interview for the book The Great American Broadcast, Roberts told Leonard Maltin that he had started at the Brooklyn station in 1930, where his responsibilities included answering phones and sweeping the floors, in addition to on-air roles playing piano and reading poetry.
During the 1930s and 1940s, at the height of the radio era, Roberts' voice appeared widely in live programming to introduce programs, moderate game shows and do live reads for commercials. Despite his Errol Flynn-like good looks and the frequent broadcasts featuring his voice, as often as several times each day, few listeners knew who he was or would have recognized him in public.
Radio credits include The Shadow (including the 1937-38 season on the Mutual Broadcasting System with a 22-year-old Orson Welles starring in the role of Lamont Cranston), the comedy Easy Aces, along with soap operas Joyce Jordan, M.D. and This is Nora Drake. He also announced or hosted a number of game shows, such as What's My Name? and the parody It Pays to Be Ignorant, in which he would pose questions to actors portraying contestants such as "Who came first: Henry I or Henry VIII?" that would be answered incorrectly. At various times, he performed on eponymous programs for Fred Allen, Milton Berle, Victor Borge and Sophie Tucker.
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