ALAN BLEVISS (1941-2017)

It is with much sadness I report on the passing of our fellow CWTS member, Alan Bleviss. I have spoken with his daughter Sarah.

Alan was a larger than life presence in the CWTS, a past president of the society and will missed as a member on our Board of Governors.

Alan was honestly the first CWTS member whose hand I shook upon joining the organization. He was idealistic, enthusiastic, and a genuinely good man. He embodied the Society for its roots as a collector organization. We are richer for knowing him, and poorer for losing him.

Bleviss was born and raised in Edmonton, where his father owned several theaters and a cigar store. He was educated at the University of Alberta and the National Theatre School of Canada. He lived in the New York City area at the height of his career from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, and passed away at his home in New York City on December 30, 2017.

He did political work for the National Abortion Rights Action League and many Democratic Party campaigns, including the 1988 campaign of Michael Dukakis for President.

Bleviss served on the Board of Directors of the National Theatre School of Canada, and funded scholarships and a student theatre facility at the University of Alberta.

Bleviss is the inspiration for a sandwich called "The Edmonton" at Shopsins, a diner in Manhattan. He is a well-known collector of Civil War tokens, unofficial currency of the early 1860s. In 2009, he auctioned off 500 items from his collection, described by the auctioneer as "one of the most extensive holdings ever assembled".

To read the complete article, see:
Alan Bleviss (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Bleviss)

Bleviss wears his sense of humour prominently, and will happily tell you about some of the pranks he pulled while at the University of Alberta. His puckish nature even stretches into his philanthropy — including naming a theatre scholarship and two facilities in the surname of his deceased father, Joe Bleviss, who disdained plays and refused to fund Alan’s education. (Motkovich is his mother’s maiden name.)

Though the elder Bleviss once owned two performance venues in Edmonton, the Varscona and the Roxy — plus the former Garneau movie theatre — he saw them strictly as business ventures. As was Hub Cigar Store, which he tried to give his eldest son in order to dissuade him from pursuing schooling in the arts.

Bleviss was unfazed by his father’s objections; he followed his love and became a gifted stage actor. But it was a Canada Dry voice audition that earned him his prestige. “It was something like, ‘From the salt spray of the Pacific Ocean to the wheat fields of Alberta … the champagne of ginger ales.’ And then I got my first paycheque. It would have taken me months to earn what I earned in an hour. I continued theatre, but in my lunch hours I would grab a bag of chips and then go do commercials.”

To read the complete article, see:
The Voice (https://www.ualberta.ca/giving/giving-news/2015/january/the-voice)

How do you capture the essence of a man of seventy-six in just a few moments? Especially when that man is your father?

My father lived a full and remarkable life, overcoming tremendous adversity time and time again. Many of you know my father as the voice of a generation, a mentor to young artists, a generous philanthropist, phenomenal bridge player, Joan Jett fan and a lover of jokes. I know my father as the son of Joe Bleviss, a cigar-shop owner and entrepreneur and Lee Bleviss, a doting and supportive mother. I also know him as a fellow leo: strong, passionate, loyal and wildly determined.

He taught me to have a strong sense of self and an even stronger moral compass. A proud union man, he put me on the picket lines with him as a kid and encouraged me to pursue my passions fully, no matter what they were. He told me to figure out what I love doing and make a living doing it. I am proud to say I have achieved that goal with his blessing.

Above all else, my father was a fighter. He didn’t let his physical impairments hold him back, fought not once but twice to regain his paralyzed vocal chords, achieved his dreams as a stage actor and voice over and traveled the world with his children.

Without my brother’s devotion and courageous care for our father in the year before he moved to New York, and without the tremendous research skills of his partner Tessa and my sister Lisa, I could not have been prepared to provide the care for my father over last sixteen months of his life. We spent long evenings together eating takeout and talking about his childhood and my own. We talked about his adventures in theatre school, his connection to Judaism and his lifelong friendships with people like my Uncle Augie. We went to see jazz, to a Chapel Hill game and spent hours in Washington Square Park people watching.

The last sixteen months has been the most humbling and also the most profound gift of my life. It has been nothing short of an honor to support my father, to be his witness, his confidant and to shower him with the love and care he deserved.

”Tomorrow I will go. I’m going to go for a short trip. We’ll go on a star.”
I responded, “When you see the stars at night will you think of me Dad? I will think of you.”
To which he replied: “When it gets dark then I will think of you. Of all of you.”

My father passed on December 30th, the sabbath. It is said that only tzadikkim, the righteous holy people, leave their bodies on Shabes. He was able to say goodbye to his partner, Tessa, his beloved children Joshua and Lisa and I held his hand and told him we would be okay and love him always. He told me he would love us always, too.

His last wishes were that his children get along, take care of one another and live their lives as authentically as possible. I ask that we all leave today working towards tikkun olam, repairing the world, by caring for one another and living as authentically as possible. Dad, your memory will forever be a blessing.

In numismatics, no one knows much or cares much about your day job. Cab driver, billionaire - we're all the same. Sometimes it turns out that you know your coin friend's work after all. This excerpt from a 1991 Philadelphia newspaper article describes Alan's non-numismatic profession. -Editor

Call it MSI - Mass Subliminal Infiltration. It booms from speaker banks at movie theaters, from TVs and Walkmans, from cars and kitchen radios across the land - everywhere there is That Voice.

Sonorous and sincere, it can be heard hawking everything from abortion rights to disposable diapers, from presidential candidates to the American Express Gold Card, from Truth or Dare to sex, lies, and videotape.

The assured, honeyed vocal cords belong to one Alan Bleviss, a lapsed Canadian who makes his home in North Jersey and his living in New York. Bleviss, whose voice radiates conviction, confidence and confection in equal amounts, narrates movie trailers and commercials.

Chances are you've heard him: "From the director of last year's most beloved movie . . . comes a magical new tale," he oozed of Everybody's Fine, the art-house followup to Academy Award-winner Cinema Paradiso.

Bleviss first deployed his sexiness, authority, warmth and confidence-that- you-can-trust as an actor north of the border. But the '60s graduate of the National Theater School of Canada found it hard to make ends meet. "I found it very difficult to live on $75 a week, maintaining two apartments - one where I lived and one that I had to rent on the road."

"My first audition was for McDonald's," Bleviss recalls. "I looked at the script and thought, 'What a piece of junk,' and I walked out. I was a proud actor.

"And there are still actors who feel that commercials are beneath them. But I treat each commercial as an acting job."

Bleviss never did do anything for McDonald's. But his next audition was for Canada Dry ginger ale, and he landed the job. The soda spot turned into a series of commercials ("They wanted a great big bold sound, almost like you were the entire country"), and soon Bleviss was working his way through recording studios and sound labs, script in hand and mouth at the ready.

Through the mid-'70s, Bleviss mixed his voice work with an acting career, but before long the former took precedent. And then came the movie trailers.

"The first one I ever did was for Emerson, Lake and Palmer's concert film Pictures at an Exhibition . . . And the next trailer I did was for Richard Gere's movie, Days of Heaven - the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Then Ragtime, and then I can't even tell you because they just sort of flew."

In 1976, the Big Apple beckoned. While most of his narrating colleagues - Don LaFontaine, Brian Cummin, Chuck Riley and Gene McGarr are some of the biz's top names - are based in Los Angeles, Bleviss opted to remain in New York, which is another reason he's found himself so busy with Miramax, a Manhattan-based independent.

Bleviss sees his work as an extension of his acting career. And sometimes he's so convincing in his two-minute spiels that he'll go see the film he's just talked up. "Sometimes I sell myself," he admits, "though really the writer has sold me."

Doing trailers, he explains, "is really a team effort, because someone has to write the script, someone has to edit the film, they have to pick the shots - and I don't think that's so easy."

"I could never edit, and I could never write the words, but once they give me the words, I love to create with them. I like doing trailers best - even though I do more commercials - because they give me a great deal of freedom to create. . . .

"A lot of people think that anybody can do it, but really you have to have a concept of English, and you have to be able to communicate. You have to understand what the words mean. What the ideas are. And then you have to communicate it to millions of people, but on a one-to-one basis.