Mason Adams

Mason Adams (February 26, 1919 - April 26, 2005) was an American voice actor and actor.

Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was of Jewish descent. He earned a master's degree in Performing and Speech Arts from the University of Michigan. He also studied Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He made his debut in 1940 in a summer play at the Hilltop Theater in Baltimore.

Adams worked on many radio programs during the Golden Age of Radio. A notable recurring role was that of Pepper Young on Pepper Young's Family, which ran from 1947 to 1959. He also portrayed the deadly Nazi Atomic Man in a classic 1945 serial on the radio version of The Adventures of Superman.

During the 1970s, Adams was a co-star of the NBC soap opera Another World, and in 1976, he was in the original 1976 Broadway cast for Checking Out.

Adams is perhaps most famous for his role as editor-in-chief Charlie Hume in the television series Lou Grant, which ran from 1977 to 1982. During his work on Lou Grant, Adams performed perhaps his most important role, as the President of the United States in the film Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981), with Sam Neill.

During the 1960s he was ubiquitous in television commercials for food and other household products, most notably for Chiffon margarine and Crest toothpaste (“Helps stop cavities before they start”). He also did the voice part for television commercials for Smucker's canned goods (“With a name like Smucker's, it's got to be good!”). He resumed this work in his later years.

Beginning in the 1980s, Adams did the voiceover for the commercial for Cadbury Creme eggs, which were advertised on television with Adams' catchy catchphrase: “Nobody knows Easter better than him.” He was the announcer for Lysol disinfectant (in 1986). Adams also did radio commercials for the Salvation Army. In addition, Adams was the narrator for Kix commercials in the 1990s, as well as in some Dentyne and Swanson's commercials. He was also the television promotional news announcer for WCBS (in 1992).

In one of the first episodes of Sesame Street, he played the narrator and voiced a cartoon with a jazzy triangle, and a slightly “square” square (with jazz music in the background). This caricature would be repeated on the show for many years well into the 1980s.

In the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon he portrayed Senator Clinton P. Anderson. During the 1970s he co-starred in the NBC soap opera Another World.

He was married to Margot Feinberg (1957-2005). They had a daughter, Betsy, and a son, Bill. Adams died on April 26, 2005 in Manhattan, of natural causes.