Actress Lent Her Voice to Politically Influential Ads

Betsy Ames, 66, a radio and TV voice-over narrator who sought to convince voters that "Tom Daschle has changed," that Al Gore exaggerated his accomplishments and that George W. Bush deserved the support of independent female voters, died of cancer March 14 at her home in Oxford, Md.

Ms. Ames, who billed herself as "The Best Damn Voice in the Business," was an actress and voice-over narrator for more than 40 years. In addition to her political work, she was the exclusive female announcer at WJLA-TV (Channel 7), the promotional voice of Discovery Channel and the public television station WETA, and the narrator for a number of National Geographic specials.

Politically she was a moderate, she told The Washington Post in 2004, but she worked exclusively for Republicans, because they were the first to contact her when she started doing political spots in 1984.

She was a featured voice for Sen. Robert J. Dole's (R-Kan.) 1996 presidential bid and in 2000 worked for then-candidate Bush, providing the off-screen voice that mocked Vice President Gore's alleged claim that he invented the Internet. "Yeah, and I invented the remote control," she said sarcastically.

Other clients included Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Lindsay Graham (S.C.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Larry Craig (Idaho). In 2008, she worked for presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.

She told The Post that she occasionally disagreed with the substance of the scripts she was hired to read, including those that were antiabortion, but she never turned any down. "I'm an actress," she said. "They give me a script. That's my job."

As an on-screen actress, she appeared in "Wedding Crashers" (2005), "Pecker" (2006) and the NBC TV miniseries "Kennedy" (1983), and her acting talent contributed to her success as an unseen voice. Her voice was smooth and professional, but she had the actor's ability to make it sound real and conversational, and she could convey a range of emotions.

She was born Elizabeth Elliott Beel in Clifton Springs, N.Y., and moved with her family to Durham, N.C., in 1954. She attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and studied acting in New York under actress Stella Adler. She also was named Miss Durham.

Ms. Ames told the Wall Street Journal in 2000 that she had wanted to be an actress since age 13, when she saw Julie Harris in the drama "A Member of the Wedding." Ms. Ames was doing modeling, voice-overs for TV commercials and some dinner theater when she began lending her compelling voice to Republican political messages. At the time, she was one of the few female voice-over narrators.

"It was a pretty slow beginning where a man might have 100 scripts, and I'd have one," she told the Journal. "Now they might hand most of them to me, and I try not to gloat."

Her marriage to Sheppard K. Ames Jr. ended in divorce.

Survivors include her husband of 26 years, William J. McFarland of Oxford; three children from the first marriage, Sheppard K. Ames III of Raleigh, N.C., Benjamin H. Ames of Washington and Elizabeth A. Lyons of Falls Church; a stepson, William J. MacFarland of Arlington County; three brothers; and six grandchildren.