TRIBUTE: Bill Hader as Morrison was ‘”sweet.”
CHILLER: NBC “Dateline” reporter Keith Morrison’s trademark Boris Karloff narration has made him more famous than the people he covers. (
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Keith Morrison’s voice scares children.
“The idea of people sitting around a campfire listening to scary stories . . . I think it is very appealing,” the “Dateline” reporter says.
“I used to tell scary stories to my kids when they were growing up.”
Delivered with all the dramatic dread of a Vincent Price movie, Morrison’s voice has its own Facebook fan page.
“Saturday Night Live” confirmed his pop-culture icon status with a spoof .
He has made fans even out of the killers and rapists he reports on.
“It’s bizarre,” he says. “You are interviewing them in a courtroom or a jail cell and before you leave, they want to get a picture [with you].”
A local anchorman in LA before joining NBC’s “Nightly News” 25 years ago, Morrison developed his trademark vocal style while working as young reporter at the Canadian Broadcasting Company under legendary producer Mark Starowicz, Canada’s equivalent to “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt.
“He kept urging all of us that the audience wanted to hear, whatever they were hearing, as a story,” Morrison says. “And so I just started talking it a little bit more that way.”
Years later, he admits, “Sometimes I think maybe they should put a brake on me.”
Whodunits about murdered beauty queens and vanishing soccer moms are Morrison’s stock-in-trade.
“I am amazed that someone will sit with me, a stranger, in a room that is crowded with television lights and crew members and [let me ask] more intimate questions than their child or spouse would ever dare,” he admits.
Morrison, 68, inherited much of his style from his father, a minister, and his mother, the church choir director.
“My dad always wanted a lesson to be read so that the congregation was interested and it wasn’t just some ritualistic reading of a piece of scripture.”
The father of six — and stepfather of “Friends” actor Matthew Perry — says he briefly considered entering the ministry, “but I was an unfocused and immature youth.”
He was flattered in 2009 to see comedian Bill Hader spoof him on “SNL.”
“It was completely embarrassing and funny and sweet,” he remembers. “It is nice to be made fun of in a way. It is just strange.
“I should probably thank him for giving me some kind of notoriety that I wouldn’t otherwise have.”