Reid Kilpatrick

Biography

Anyone who's ever heard Reid Kilpatrick's voice must surely say to himself, "I've heard that voice before." Kilpatrick was a born broadcast announcer, and Hollywood seems to have taken him up on it since nearly every role he played was as the "voice" of an announcer. At the age of 22, Kilpatrick married Elinor Olst and started his radio career in the Detroit area. His first role was a few lines as an announcer at a tote board in the racing movie The Crowd Roars (1932). By his next role in 1937, he'd moved out to Los Angeles to make a go of it, but his marriage didn't last long in the big city. In 1939 his voice was cast as "announcer" in 11 movies, though the people of Los Angeles knew him more intimately for his work in radio, at station KEHE. In 1940, married to a co-ed by the name of Frances, eleven years his junior, he moved over to the, now legendary radio station, KHJ. Kilpatrick's initiation into actual acting began at the East Bakersfield auditorium in 1943 where he played Mortimer Brewster in the play Arsenic and Old Lace, less than a year before Warner Brothers released Frank Capra's film version. Critics, though, were not thrilled with Kilpatrick's performance, saying it bordered on the burlesque. Kilpatrick played in just three films in which he was not cast an announcer, Divorce (1945), Allotment Wives (1945), and his final film, Bad for Each Other (1953). His film career was very much like his role in Allotment Wives (1945). He appeared in the first scenes. His character seemed to be an important figure. He performed his job well and then slipped from sight, and we never see him again. Kilpatrick retired from Hollywood in his early forties but continued to do radio till his death in 1983.