They often say your hero is only as good as your villain. Batman has the Joker. Superman fights Lex Luthor. Spider-Man's arch-enemy is the Green Goblin. But of all the comic book superheroes, I think the Fantastic Four had the perfect nemesis. I am talking about none other than the ruler of Latveria, Dr. Doom.
While Doom is commonly referred to as one of the greatest villains in comics, he hasn't been treated all that well in adaptations. The live-action movies have all featured characters who were Doom in name only, and it doesn't look like that's changing anytime soon (RDJ as Doom...I shudder). Animation has similarly been rocky, but one of the better versions had to have been the version seen in the 1967 cartoon, portrayed by Joseph Sirola. (Quick note: Sirola was never credited for the role, but a 1974 profile in The Orlando Sentinel confirms his involvement)
Born on October 7th, 1929 in New Jersey, Sirola had a long career that spanned film, TV, commercials, and the stage. He started on TV, appearing in shows like Perry Mason, Get Smart, Gunsmoke, and several others. He'd continue to appear in TV shows until the late eighties. Shortly after his TV career began, he took to the stage and would later begin producing plays in the 2000s. But of all his work, it may be his commercial credits that are his biggest claim to fame. Over the years, his voice has been used to sell burgers, cars, oil, you name it. It was this area of his career that likely inspired Hanna-Barbera to court him as the Latverian ruler for their take on the Fantastic Four. His experience playing villains didn't hurt either.
While Joseph Sirola wasn't the first actor to portray Doom (that honor goes to Henry Ramer in The Marvel Super Heroes a year earlier), he was the first to play the character opposite the Fantastic Four. His take on the character was more campy than threatening (not helped by the odd decision to animate his mouth), but it fit the show all the same. While I'd have liked a more intense version of the character, would that have fit a show where the Super Skrull gets turned into a cow? Not exactly. Even if he wasn't that intimidating, Sirola nailed Doom's theatricality and pompousness. There's no doubt that his theater background helped him achieve that major part of the Doctor's character.
Like other members of the show's voice cast, Joseph Sirola disappeared from animation after his work on Fantastic Four concluded. He'd continue to be heard in numerous commercials, but for Sirola, I guess one cartoon was enough. He'd retire in the 2010s after nearly sixty years in the entertainment industry. On February 10th, 2019, Sirola passed away from respiratory failure at the age of 89.
In celebration of his work, I share with you this piece that ran in the October 24th, 1989 edition of the News Journal, focusing on his career. It mostly gravitates towards his work on Wolf, a crime drama series that Sirola starred in, but there's also discussion of his voice work.
Voice-over king heard and seen
By Thomas D. Elias
Tune the tube to CBS at 9 p.m. on Tuesdays, and you'll finally get a look at Sirola.
Sirola, dubbed the "king of voice-overs" by the Wall Street Journal, at last is getting to do something other than pitch products and portray Mafia dons.
In "Wolf," the 58-year-old plays Salvatore Lupo, an aging Italian-American in seemingly perpetual conflict with his 35-ish son (Jack Scalia), Tony Wolf.
"I see my role as a little like the 'Golden Girls', except I'm a Golden Boy," Sirola said, sipping a trademark glass of champagne over lunch here the other day.
An unapologetic lover of the good life, Sirola said "I'm a real rogue in this one, but a charming old devil. They're going to give me ladies, but I can't get too serious with them. I'm true to my dead wife."
In real life, there is no wife and never was.
But there are plenty of touches of the real Joe Sirola in "Wolf," places where audiences can finally learn something about the man who tells the world that "GE brings good things to life" and that "Mobil 1 [is] the oil that saves you gas."
Sirola is also the guy who says a Club Med vacation is "the antidote for civilization" and that Hertz is "The No. 1 way to rent a car."
But there's nothing so crassly commercial in "Wolf," taped on location in San Francisco.
You get Sirola playing boccie (an Italian form of lawn bowling), just like he did while growing up as the son of Italian immigrants in New Jersey. And you get outbursts of Italian expletives that would be hard to fake.
"Someone who's not Italian can't do our expressions right," says Sirola. "They have to come from the gut, they can't be cerebral."
The real Joe Sirola habitually passes out red roses to almost everyone he meets, and Sal Lupo does a bit of that, too.
But Sirola's life today is starkly different from the threadbare existence lived by the far more elderly Sal, who lodges in a boarding house whenever he's not running away to escape its regimentation.
The real Joe Sirola lives in an 11th-floor penthouse near New York's Central Park with a large balcony garden.
He keeps a house in Hollywood, too, complete with a mint-condition 1956 Mercedes 300SC coupe originally built for billionaire J. Paul Getty.
Voice-overs are the key to a lifestyle that lets him grow figs, apricots, grapes, blueberries, peaches, pears, and— most delightful of all— many varieties of roses in that unlikeliest of agricultural centers, Manhattan.
"Back in 1966, I made $3,200 from unemployment benefits," he recalls. "In 1967, I get $5,200 for the whole year. Then somebody mentioned voice-overs."
The key to Sirola's success, he says, was that he didn't merely try to boom out the advertiser's message in a deep voice, which he's fully capable of doing.
Instead, he says, "I started talking to the microphone like a person. You have to think of who that person is, the kind of person you want to convey the message to.
"A natural sense of timing also helped. If they tell me to make it in 58.2 seconds, that's exactly what it'll be, the first time. That's why I can do many commercials in one day. The most I ever made was 102. Anyway, I made $81,000 in 1968 and $310,000 the next year and now I make well into seven figures from voice-overs."
Sirola has to be careful which clients he chooses. "There are some outfits which the president of GE wouldn't want me to be representing," he says. "And you have to watch for conflicts. If I do a beer commercial, I can't do a different beer for a year and a half. So my agent has to investigate carefully how big the buy will be."
Once he takes a gig, Sirola gets double or triple the usual scale of $275 per national commercial, plus residuals every time one airs.
Heard, but never seen. For this famous voice doesn't want to have a face that's associated with a particular product.
"If you're constantly on TV commercials where you're seen, you are limited in the parts you can get," he said.
Sirola has been somewhat limited in that department, anyway, usually being typecast as a crook in everything from "The Untouchables" to "Super Cops," with a stint on the daytime soap opera "The Brighter Day" in between.
He sees "Wolf" as a way out, a shift of gears for his career.
"I'm hoping other roles will come from this," he said. "This is my first opportunity in years to play a real human being. I don't want to play charming villains all the time."
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