LAGUNA FEST LOSES ITS LONGTIME ‘VOICE’

The Laguna Beach Festival of Arts will open today minus a large chunk of its colorful history, as cast members mourn the death of Russell C. Potter, 75, the longtime “voice of the pageant.”

As pageant scriptwriter and narrator from 1948 to 1965, Potter made a strong imprint on the festival, now in its 50th year.

“He was a great part of the festival at the time,” said pageant spokeswoman Sally Reeve. “He was a marvelous man. He had a marvelous sense of humor that he wrote into scripts. People loved him. He was much more than a narrator.”

“I worked with him for many years,” said Carl Callaway, festival technical director. “He had a gorgeous voice and delivery.” According to Callaway, Potter was the longest-running narrator in pageant history.

After leaving the Festival of Arts, Potter went on to film and narrate travelogues.

“He was the only one who ever took a film of a hippo giving birth in the Nile,” Margaret Potter said. Russell Potter died of heart failure at 5 a.m. Monday, his wife Margaret said.