Norman Rose

Norman Rose (June 23, 1917 – November 12, 2004) was an American actor, radio announcer, and narrator whose deep baritone earned him the nickname "the Voice of God" among colleagues. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he began his acting career as a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., later refining his skills at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York.

Rose's stage career spanned Broadway and off-Broadway productions across more than a decade. His Broadway appearances between 1943 and 1956 included the melodrama Deadfall, the comedy Right Next to Broadway, the drama Land of Fame, The Fifth Season, and Lovers, among other productions. He also appeared on Broadway in Richard III and St. Joan, and performed off-Broadway in The Brothers Karamazov. In 1948, Rose and producer David Heilweil co-founded New Stages, an off-Broadway repertory company that staged the American debut of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Respectful Prostitute before the play transferred to Broadway.

During World War II, the United States Office of War Information recruited Rose to serve as a radio newscaster. Following the war, he became the announcer and narrator of NBC's Dimension X and later contributed his voice to CBS Radio Mystery Theater. His radio work extended to narrating the satirical 1972 National Lampoon recording Deteriorata, featured on the album Radio Dinner.

Rose's voice became one of the most recognizable in American broadcasting. He served as the voice behind the Juan Valdez Colombian coffee television commercials and provided promotional announcements for both NBC and ABC from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. He narrated the short film Harold and the Purple Crayon in 1959 and provided several character voices for the 1963 CBS animated series Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. He also narrated the 70th anniversary broadcast of the Academy Awards and recorded numerous books for the blind. Additionally, Rose taught drama at the Juilliard School.

His film work was extensive. He voiced the character of Death in Woody Allen's 1975 comedy Love and Death and appeared on screen in Woody Allen's Radio Days and Martin Ritt's The Front (1976). Other screen appearances included The Joe Louis Story (1953), The Violators (1957), Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes (1971), Who Killed Mary What's Her Name? (1971), Jump (1971), and Mike Nichols' Biloxi Blues (1988) as a newsreel announcer. As a narrator, Rose provided the English-language narration for Kinji Fukasaku's Message from Space (1978), the English dub of the 1968 Soviet production of War and Peace, Ishirō Honda's Destroy All Monsters, and the 1989 documentary How Hitler Lost the War, produced by David Hoffman.

On television, Rose portrayed psychiatrist Dr. Marcus Polk on two ABC soap operas, One Life to Live and All My Children, playing the same character across both programs from 1969 to 1974. He also appeared in The Edge of Night and Search for Tomorrow. He served as the offscreen narrator for the televised broadcast of Mikhail Baryshnikov's production of The Nutcracker in 1977, a broadcast that has aired repeatedly and is available on DVD.

Rose died on November 12, 2004, at his home in Upper Nyack, New York.