Listen to the voice of Don LaFontaine

He was a man blessed with a special power, a man who could transform even the most implausible of conceits into something that was terrifying, momentous and coming to cinemas "this summer".

Now, this summer, the summer in the year of 2008, will be remembered as the last time in history that the voice of Don LaFontaine was heard in cinemas around the world, announcing forthcoming features. Hollywood’s most celebrated voiceover artist has died at the age of 68.

Credited as the originator of the modern film trailer, his gravelly, sonorous voice could be heard soaring over the promotion clips of more than 5,000 films, every vowel ringing with portent. Romantic entanglements, high school dramas, and bullet strewn robot wars all sounded, beneath his melodramatic baritone, to be productions of historic importance.

Endlessly impersonated and parodied, his pronouncements became part of film folk law: many have passed into cliché. He and his collaborators coined the phrase: “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no way out”. Then there was: “A one-man army”, or “one man, one destiny” and most ubiquitous of all, his oft-used opener: “In a world where . . ." .

In an interview last year, he explained that “we have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting [cinema viewers] to. That’s very easily done by saying, ‘In a world where . . . violence rules’, ‘In a world where . . . men are slaves and women are the conquerors’. You very rapidly set the scene.”

Born in Minnesota, LaFontaine joined the army after leaving school and became a recording engineer in the United States Army Band and Chorus. After his discharge he moved to New York to work as a sound engineer and editor, where he fell in with a young radio producer named Floyd Peterson, recording commercials for Dr Strangelove.

In 1963 the two went into business together, working out of Peterson’s apartment, producing trailers for film studios. It was only in 1965 that LaFontaine found his true calling.

In a world, as he might have said, where a format for film trailers was only just being developed, at a time when an announcer could not get to the studio on schedule, one man, Don LaFontaine, was forced to fill in, narrating off the cuff the thrilling highlights of a forthcoming film, Gunfighters of Casa Grande.

The producers liked his voice and so LaFontaine took the first steps on a journey to greatness. He headed production houses, he became "the voice" of Paramount Pictures from 1978 to 1981, and named vice-president of the studio in 1980. But, according to his website, he missed the cut and thrust of voiceovers on the studio floor. He left Paramount in 1981 and set up in Los Angeles as an independent producer.

In the following decades he established himself in the industry as “the voice of God”. To everyone else he was the voice of Hollywood, recognised all over the world. Averaging up to ten voice-overs a day, he was chauffeured from studio to studio to save time, and once claimed to have managed 50 jobs in a day, a personal record. The dozen or so voiceover artists who carved a career in his wake all did their best, but all were said to be imitating LaFontaine.

He did all he could to help those who were cutting their teeth, inviting them to spend a day riding around with him in his limo, learning more about the industry, a rare generosity in an industry as savagely competitive as Hollywood.

A fellow artist, Ashton Smith, wrote a testimonial to LaFontaine on his website. “When you die, the voice you hear in heaven is not Don’s,” he wrote. “It’s God trying to sound like Don.”

As well as films he worked on 350,000 commercials and thousands of television promotions, parodying his own high style in a 2005 car insurance advert. Last year he submitted himself to the same treatment in a trailer for The Simpsons Movie.

He died on Monday at a medical centre close to his home in Los Angeles, after complications in the treatment of an ongoing illness. He is survived by his wife, the singer and actress Nita Whitaker, and his three daughters.

The world of cinema trailers may never be the same again.

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