Actor Alexander Scourby Dies at 71 : Familiar Voice of ‘Victory at Sea,’ Recordings for the Blind

Alexander Scourby, the genial actor whose precise and resonant voice was heard narrating “Victory at Sea” and recording more than 300 works of literature for the blind, died Saturday in Boston after a sudden illness.

A family spokesman said Scourby, 71, who was host for the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live From the Met” radio broadcasts, had gone to Boston from his home in Newtown, Conn., to act as host for a National Public Radio production of Handel’s opera, “Semele.”

His sister, Mary Scourby, said a memorial service will be held at the Player’s Club in Manhattan, though no time has yet been set. Private cremation services will be held in Newtown.

Born Nov. 13, 1913, in Brooklyn, Scourby was the son of Greek immigrants who expected him to follow his father into the bakery business.

“But my interest in baking was really as a consumer rather than as a producer,” he said, “so I was editor of a magazine and yearbook at Manual Training High School (in Brooklyn) and later enrolled in the journalism course at West Virginia University.”

Thought of a writing career evaporated suddenly, however, when he appeared in a campus drama group’s production of A. A. Milne’s “Mr. Pim Passes By,” and, as he told an interviewer 30 years later, he “never really recovered. . . .”

His father’s death the next year took him home to Brooklyn--but not to the family bakery. Instead, he became an apprentice at Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theater in Manhattan, where he learned dancing, speech, characterization, makeup--and was given his first professional assignment, a walk-on in “Liliom.”

Scourby joined other apprentices in forming the Apprentice Theater, which presented plays at the New School for Social Research during the 1933-34 season, and landed his first major professional role--as the Player King in Leslie Howard’s production of “Hamlet” in 1936, touring with the company after 39 Broadway performances.

The following year, he began what was to be a lifelong association when his touring roommate, actor Wesley Addy, introduced him to the Foundation for the Blind’s Talking Book program, for whom he played a small part in a recorded version of “Antony and Cleopatra” and later began reading novels into an early version of long-playing records.

His stage career continued with appearances in Maurice Evans’ “Hamlet,” and “Henry IV, Part I” and in “Richard II.”

Meanwhile, he had begun a parallel career in radio, playing running parts in five soap operas, narrating Andre Kostelanetz’s musical program for a year (using the pseudonym Alexander Scott at the sponsors’ request) and playing the part of Clark Kent’s Kryptonial father, Jor El, in a radio account of Superman’s origins.

Worked in War Effort

During World War II, he did broadcasts beamed abroad in both English and Greek for the Office of War Information, and remained active in legitimate theater with summer stock and appearing with John Gielgud in “Crime and Punishment” at the National Theater in New York.

He was a founder of New Stages, a drama company that produced plays in Greenwich Village in 1947 and 1948, and played the tough racketeer in “Detective Story” for its year-and-eight-months Broadway run.

His first film appearance was with Glenn Ford in “Affair in Trinidad,” and “The Big Heat” at Columbia, followed by roles as a Greek officer in “The Glory Brigade” and a Biblical character in “The Silver Chalice.”

He also made appearances in “Giant,” “The Big Fisherman,” “Man on a String,” “Seven Thieves,” “The Devil at 4 O’Clock,” and “The Executioner.”

Moves Into Television

In the early 1950s, he moved into television as both actor and narrator, appearing on-screen in several “Playhouse 90,” “Circle Theater” and Studio One” productions, and had occasional parts in the “Daniel Boone,” “Defenders” and “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” series.

But his work as the unseen narrator for such television classic documentaries as “Victory at Sea,” “Three, Two, One, Zero,” “The Coming of Christ,” and “He Is Risen” that made his reputation as what a Variety writer once called, “the voice of the world.”

In addition to his sister, Scourby leaves his wife, actress Lori March, and a daughter, Alexandra.

During the last two years, he had limited his professional life to continued recording of Talking Books and to hosting the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on public radio.

‘Really Means Something

But he said the recordings for the blind were “the work that really means something.”

“If anyone remembers me 50 years from now,” he told a Variety interviewer in 1962, “I’d bet anything it isn’t for my stage work or the movies--or even for the television documentaries. No, I think it might be for the books: the ones we did for people who can’t see.

“And you know, I think I’d be very proud of that.”