Reed Farrell

Reed Farrell was a broadcaster, actor, and writer.

Farrell attended the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as a fine arts major, and Los Angeles City College, where he majored in drama, radio and television. He became a disc jockey early in his career for radio stations in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Missouri and Illinois.

He went on to work as an actor, voiceover artist and narrator in television films, commercials and industrial films, and as a writer of hundreds of television and radio commercials. In January 1958, while working as a disc jockey at KWK in St. Louis, he was filmed smashing rock & roll records, declaring “Rock & roll has got to go … and go it does at KWK.”  The film clip of Farrell destroying the records has been used in numerous documentaries.

In the 1960s, Farrell returned to his native Flint, Michigan, and became a local celebrity as horror movie program host Christopher Coffin, the “Guardian of the Ghouls” for WJRT-TV. In the early 1970s, he hosted the St. Louis TV program Reed Farrell Morning Affair, where he featured guests such as Milton Berle, Robert Goulet, Cloris Leachman and Minnie Pearl.

Farrell joined the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) in 1955 and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) the following year. He was inspired to become active in his unions during the joint SAG and AFTRA commercials strike in 1979. He was elected as AFTRA’s national president in 1989, a position he held until 1993.

Farrell died July 6, 2019. He was 89.