Philippus ('Philip') Bloemendal (25 June 1918, in

Scheveningen Scheveningen is one of the eight districts of The Hague, Netherlands, as well as a subdistrict (''wijk'') of that city. Scheveningen is a modern seaside resort with a long, sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier, and a lighthouse. The beach is po ...

– 22 February 1999, in

Amersfoort Amersfoort () is a city and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands, about 20 km from the city of Utrecht and 40 km south east of Amsterdam. As of 1 December 2021, the municipality had a population of 158,531, making it the second- ...

) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

cinema

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, informa ...

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...

announcer An announcer is a voice artist who relays information to the audience of a broadcast media programme or live event. Television and other media Some announcers work in television production, radio or filmmaking, usually providing narrations, ...

and

voice-over Voice-over (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non-Diegetic#Film sound and music, diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, th ...

. He gained nationwide fame as the offscreen announcer of the Dutch national

Polygoon The Dutch Polygoon-Profilti was a cinema newsreel company in the Netherlands from 1919 to 1987. It started with weekly news items in the Dutch language, Dutch movie theaters and lasted until 1987 when it finally surrendered to television news sho ...

newsreel from 1946 to 1986. Bloemendal has been nicknamed "The voice of the Netherlands." Bloemendal was born in Scheveningen in a Jewish family. After obtaining his HBS-diploma he worked in the textile industry for a short while. He survived the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

by going into hiding, but almost all his relatives, including his mother, were killed in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

. After the war Bloemendal became an announcer with Dutch radio. A year later he entered the service of the Polygoon film company as editor-announcer of the cinema newsreel. In 1952 he became its editor in chief. In 1981 he became Polygoon's managing director. When the cinema newsreel was discontinued in 1986, Bloemendal was bestowed the record of 'longest serving cinema newsreel announcer' by the

Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

. Bloemendal also recorded station announcements for the

Amsterdam metro The Amsterdam Metro ( nl, Amsterdamse metro) is a rapid transit system serving Amsterdam, Netherlands, and extending to the surrounding municipalities of Diemen and Ouder-Amstel. Until 2019 it also served the municipality of Amstelveen but thi ...

. These recordings have by now gone out of service. Bloemendal's characteristic voice and

enunciation Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone as well as the idea and practice of effective speech and its forms. It stems from the idea that while communication is symbolic, sounds are final and compelli ...

is closely associated with the period of post-war reconstruction in the Netherlands, of which his newsreel gave optimistic accounts. His voice is regularly imitated and parodied, especially in radio and television commercials.

Legacy

The Philip Bloemendal Foundation was founded in 2001 "with the aim of passing on the best practices about effective use of language and communication in the media to new generations of presenters." The foundation grants a biennial prize of

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...

3500 to a talented media presenter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloemendal, Philip 1918 births 1999 deaths Dutch television news presenters Dutch television directors Dutch television editors Dutch reporters and correspondents Dutch radio news presenters Mass media people from The Hague 20th-century Dutch journalists