"In a world where all trailers sounds the same and you become a cliche..." Don LaFontaine was king.  His gravelly tones were the equivalent of the floating heads on movie posters; they were a standard and you wish studios would do something more creative but you understood it was the quick and easy way to sell a film.  And while LaFontaine spelled-out the premises of over 5,000 films in their trailers during his 33 years in the business, his impact will live on.  He'll be like The Phantom or The Dread Pirate Roberts: a new on takes their place and their mantle.  There will be a new Mr. Movie Voice and folks probably won't be able to tell the difference.  That's not to say that LaFontaine's death is meaningless.  On the contrary, he is ETERNAL.

His agent said he passed away from complications in the treatment of an ongoing illness.  This means LaFontaine did NOT die from smoking eight-hundred cigarettes a day, swallowing gravel, or accidentally taking a lozenge.