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Richard Basehart

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9.5 Superb
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Biography

Recent Role:
Slade on Tales of the Unexpected
Gender:
Male
Born:
8-31-1914
Died:
9-17-1984 (aftermath of a stroke)
Birthplace:
Zanesville, Ohio, USA
Birth Name:
John Richard Basehart
The deep, resonant voice of Richard Basehart was ideal for narration jobs on documentaries and voice-overs, and the man himself was a fine actor with a tough, incisive style. He achieved first fame on Broadway in John Patrick's play "The Hasty Heart", just after the war, and Hollywood came calling soon enough. In "Fourteen Hours" (1951), he attracted rave reviews as a would-be suicide standing on a ledge high up in a skyscraper, but it wasn't the sort of role to propel anyone into conventional leading-man status, any more than was the villainous fellow Basehart played in "The House On… More Telegraph Hill", where he played opposite his wife, Valentina Cortese. Twentieth Century Fox had him under contract, but they didn't know what to do with him. In "Titanic" (1953), he was suddenly billed far lower than he had previously been and was cast as a cliche - a whiskey priest who regains his faith in a disaster. Basehart must have been annoyed with Hollywood, for he left soon after for Europe with Cortese, and in her native Italy did two films for Fellini ("La Strada" and "Il Bidone") which were far better than any films he'd done previously. In England, he played Ishmael in John Huston's film of "Moby Dick" (1956). He never quite regained his Hollywood stardom, but he was effective in many TV roles (several of which utilized his fondness for doing an English accent) and starred in the absurd, but very popular, fantasy series "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea".

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    10 Perfect
    Richard Basehart is one of my favorite actors.He was well known for narrating TV shows..His last role was narrating a Greek poem while the Olympic Flame was being turned off at the Closing Ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles summer Olympics. hide show

    Richard is one of my favorite actors. I never met him but he was one of my orginal favorites as he was Adm Nelson on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.He narrated several National Geographic specials. But he was well know for doing narration of shows. I well remember him from Voyage he was always the one in charge and you know the Voyage situation Adm Nelson was the boss and Capt Crane ran the Seaview. He is the reason I watched the orginal Knight Rider pilot in 1982. I saw the TV Guide listing that he was listed as a guest star. He played Wilton Knight who was responsible for KITT. Richard did the opening narration for the orginal Knight Rider. He died two years later but you could still hear his voice doing the narration that explained Knight Rider.For younger TV fans before video tapes you could get audio tapes of old TV shows. Thats one way us older fans are good at recognizing actors from their voices. I remember him from the short lived W.E.B. In the WEB pilot he was the narrator of some special the network he worked for did.

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    OLDERTVFAN Added Jan 14, 2009 All my reviews
 

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