Bill Cunningham obit

Bill Cunningham, CESD Talent Agency Founder, Dies at 96

The onetime singer and voice of Barbie's boyfriend started the firm in 1963 as the Pacific Artists Agency, one of the first commercial and voice-over talent outfits in Los Angeles. 

He was not on the list.

Bill Cunningham, the original voice of Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken, and a singer once backed by Fred Astaire who 60 years ago launched the company now known as the CESD Talent Agency, has died. He was 96.

Cunningham died July 15 at his home in West Hollywood, the agency announced.

The founder was “among the great innovators and gentlemen of the talent representation business,” CESD partners Ken Slevin and Paul Doherty said in a statement. “Bill set the template for client and customer service, particularly in commercial, voice-over and print. He was a warm, gregarious, classy man who made a positive impact on all those he represented and employed. It was our honor to know him and to learn from him.”

With the encouragement of friend and singer Peggy Taylor, Cunningham in 1963 invested his life savings into starting the Pacific Artists Agency, one of the first commercial and voice-over agencies in Los Angeles. It was located at Crossroads of the World on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

He started the business by creating an album of his 10 voiceover clients and a book of headshots of his on-camera clients complete with handwritten bios, then personally dropped them off to producers around town.

Pacific Artists became Cunningham & Associates in 1967, and he would open a second office in New York and a third in Chicago as the firm became one of the most successful bicoastal commercial/voice-over agencies in the business.

Cunningham retired in 1989, having sold the agency to T.J. Escott and Angela Dipine, who in turn sold it in 2005 to Slevin and Doherty. (CESD stands for Cunningham-Escott-Slevin-Doherty.)

The youngest of six children, William David Cunningham was born in San Francisco on Jan. 2, 1927. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, served aboard a mine-sweeper craft and entertained fellow sailors as a member of the Fort Emory Drum and Bugle Corps.

After the service, he appeared on NBC’s Voices of Walter Schumann and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, sang on motion picture soundtracks for Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. and was the first voice of Ken for Mattel Toys.

In 1962, Cunningham saw the release of his debut album, I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, which was financed by Astaire, and he followed that by touring with Judy Garland. He wrote about it in his 2014 autobiography, I Wonder What Became of Me.

Survivors include his nephews and nieces, Kirk, Kevin, Kristen, Janet, Barbara and Debbie.