Kansas Citian is voice of Yoda. Retired after a stroke, he’s getting Hollywood honor
You might not have heard of Tom Kane, but you almost certainly have heard Tom Kane.
The Overland Park resident’s voice is virtually omnipresent, from Yoda in “Star Wars” movies and video games to Disney monorails to TV cartoons to the Academy Awards.
“He’s the voice of everything,” said Roberta Solomon, also a voiceover star from the Kansas City area.
“He’s on every animated show that’s ever been out there, and he’s done thousands of movie trailers. And documentaries. And, oh, he’s the celebrity sound-alike for Morgan Freeman and Sean Connery and Patrick Stewart. And, oh, he’s voiced the Oscars like a gajillion times.”
All of which is why he will receive an honorary award at the Clio Entertainment 50th Anniversary Celebration on Dec. 14 in Hollywood. Clio Entertainment is an arm of the Clios, which are the advertising world’s equivalent of the Oscars. But Kane’s career has careened to areas far beyond advertising or even entertainment.
That career officially ended in September when Kane, 59, retired after having suffered a debilitating stroke about a year earlier. His daughter Sam announced the retirement on Facebook, writing, “The damage to his speech center is just too severe.”
The Clios community almost immediately decided to honor Kane, describing him as a “legendary voiceover artist” on its website.
“He’s absolutely a legend,” said Matt Wiewel, another Kansas City-area voiceover artist.
“I’d put him right up there with a guy named Don LaFontaine, who is best known as the movie announcer guy and also does the Geico commercials, and Mel Blanc, who did all the voices you’d recognize. Tom is in that category.”
It could be argued that Kane is a combination of LaFontaine, who recorded nearly 5,000 movie trailers, and Blanc, called “The Man of Thousand Voices” — including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker.
“He works in a variety of genres, which is so uncommon,” said Wiewel, who described himself as “almost exclusively a commercial guy.”
“Typically, (voice) people work in one particular area. He does just a breadth of characters on a variety of video games and cartoons or animation shows. … He also does commercials. He also does live announce for the Oscars, and TV promo. … He works across all of them, and he works at the highest level in all of them.”
Kane, a 1980 graduate of Shawnee Mission South High School and a University of Kansas alumnus, got his start in the business when he heard a radio spot for the American Heart Association that had what he considered a subpar voiceover. He called, said he could do better and snatched the job.
He was 15 at the time.
After working much of his career in Los Angeles, he returned to Overland Park, where a home studio built by Hollywood sound designers allowed him to send his voice for jobs around the world.
Kane is best known in the “Star Wars” world, having been the voice of Yoda for projects since 2000 and having worked on “The Force Awakens,” “Rogue One,” “Solo,” “The Rise of Skywalker” and other movie, TV and video game projects.
After Kane’s stroke last year, Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker, tweeted: “Tom Kane is an enormously gifted actor & a genuinely nice person.”
His cartoon work has included “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “Wolverine and the X-Men,” “The Powerpuff Girls,” “Archer,” “Kim Possible” and “The Wild Thornberrys” (playing the Thornberrys’ pet chimpanzee Darwin).
He was the announcer for the live Oscars telecast four times and has been the voice of Disney World’s monorail system since 2012.
Still, Kane has found time to help others in the voiceover world, including Solomon and Wiewel.
“He was extremely generous with his time and his knowledge, sharing his advice to me when he didn’t have to at all,” Wiewel said.
Solomon said Kane has provided tips on voice work and on the business side of the industry. She is the voice of Kansas City Public Television and about 30 radio and TV stations nationwide and works on documentaries, movie trailers and even “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
“There is nobody that I know of who has had the extensive career that he has had who is so generous with his time and his work with other voice talent,” she said.
“I don’t know of anybody else in the voiceover world … whose voice is literally everywhere. He’s worked in every area of voiceover, and he’s been doing it since he was 15 years old. You can definitely call him a legend. There’s nobody like him.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2021 at 12:30 PM.
