While a music and speech major at Washington State College (now University), Arthur Wells Gilmore honed his singing skills on Tacoma radio station KVI in 1934, and worked in broadcasting at the college’s radio station, KWSC (as did the legendary Edward R. Murrow before him), in 1934 — 1935. Seattle station KOL hired him in late 1935, where listeners soon dubbed him “The Man with the Smiling Voice.” Heading to Los Angeles in the summer of 1936, he auditioned for KFWB, which hired him as a staff announcer. KNX soon invited him to audition and hired him as both singer and staff announcer. Gilmore remained with KNX until 1941, when he left to freelance. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy, including on the escort aircraft carrier USS Lunga Point in the Pacific.
After his Navy discharge, Gilmore co-authored the 1946 book Radio Announcing, followed by its 1949 successor Television and Radio Announcing. In 1956, his college alumni journal wrote: “It has been said that Gilmore’s voice probably has been heard by more Americans than anyone else in the business, as he has been featured as an actor or announcer on every major radio program that originated from Hollywood, has narrated more than 2,500 motion picture features and short subjects, has recorded thousands of radio commercial announcements, and is featured in a series of children’s albums by Capitol Records.”
In 1959, he began two years’ service as president of the AFTRA Los Angeles Local. Ironically, just before his election as national president in the summer of 1961, the L.A. local, of which he was a board member, called a strike against KFWB — the station that first hired him in 1936.
In June 1998, Gilmore received the Washington State University Alumni Achievement Award for his “distinction and innovation in the radio and television profession.”
He voiced over 3,000 movie trailers and, in 2006, Hollywood’s American Cinematheque celebrated him with “An In-Person Tribute to Art Gilmore, Voice of the Trailers.” He was the founding president of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, which bestows an annual award in his honor.