Andre Baruch; ‘Your Hit Parade’ Announcer

Andre Baruch, whose long radio career ranged from broadcasting Brooklyn Dodgers baseball games to announcing “Your Hit Parade,” died Sunday at his home in Beverly Hills.

His son, Wayne Baruch, said Monday that the Parisian-born airwaves pioneer was 83 and died of the complications of old age.

One of Baruch’s most enduring stints was as announcer for “Your Hit Parade,” a program that much of the nation awaited eagerly in the 1930s and ‘40s as it reported in extravagant detail the 10 top-selling songs of the preceding week. On that show and others he was the voice of Lucky Strike cigarettes.

It was Baruch who boomed one of the most popular phrases to come out of World War II: “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War.”

Another of his long affiliations was with Kate Smith, the “Songbird of the South,” on her radio show that made its debut in 1936.

Baruch’s distinctive voice also was a key part of another of radio’s legendary programs--”The Shadow.” As announcer, it fell to Baruch to intone:

The Shadow, mysterious character who aids the forces of law and order, is in reality Lamont Cranston, wealthy young man about town. Several years ago in the Orient, Cranston learned a strange and mysterious secret . . . the hypnotic power to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him.

Trained as a pianist, Baruch came to New York as a teen-ager to study art and music. But as radio became an increasingly important performance art, Baruch’s sonorous voice made him an ideal candidate for the new medium.

He became one of the first staff announcers for CBS and by the 1930s was working on such programs as “The FBI in Peace and War,” “The American Album of Familiar Music” and several soap operas, among them the perennial favorites “Myrt and Marge,” “Second Husband” and “Just Plain Bill.”

He also announced many of the Big Band remotes of the day, introducing Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glen Gray, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey brothers and Glenn Miller to radio audiences.

After participating in the invasion of North Africa during World War II, Baruch helped found the Armed Forces Radio Network.

While working on the Kate Smith show, he met singer Bea Wain. They married in 1936 and in 1945 began a disc jockey program in New York called “Mr. and Mrs. Music.” Baruch also began working as a network newscaster for ABC and NBC, and when “Hit Parade” made the transition to TV in the late 1950s, Baruch went along, continuing his relationship with Lucky Strike.

In 1954 he began to do broadcasts for the Brooklyn Dodgers alongside a young redhead named Vin Scully. But Baruch opted to stay in New York when the team moved to Los Angeles.

In their later years, the Baruchs did voice-overs, performed at Big Band events and entertained at the Motion Picture and Television Country Home in Woodland Hills. In 1981 they produced a nationally syndicated radio series of “Your Hit Parade” for a new generation of listeners.

Besides his wife, Baruch is survived by a son, daughter, sister and two grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for today at noon at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park. The family is asking that donations be made to the Society of Singers.