Lary Lewman, voice of The Star, voice-over artist for Democrats, dies at 76

Lary Lewman, who entertained Baltimore children as Pete the Pirate on an afternoon television program and who later became the preferred voice-over artist for thousands of Democratic political commercials, died July 11 at his home in the Howard County community of Clarksville. He was 76.

He had Parkinson’s disease, said his son, Lance Lewman.

Early in his career, Mr. Lewman had ambitions of being a stage actor before turning to television. He donned a false beard and a black hat with a skull-and-crossbones emblem to create the role of Pete the Pirate for a kids’ show on Baltimore’s WBAL-TV (Channel 11) in the early 1960s.

He was the host of “Consumer Survival Kit,” a syndicated TV program produced by Maryland Public Television in the 1970s, but by 1976 Mr. Lewman began to focus almost exclusively on his career as a voice-over actor.

He was the announcer for hundreds of commercials and industrial films and narrated documentaries for the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. But he found his steadiest work as the anonymous, if ubiquitous, voice speaking on TV commercials for every Democratic presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton.