Leo Chaloukian: A Life in Sound and Service

Leo Chaloukian, multiple Emmy Award-winning American sound designer/sound executive/entrepreneur, and former chair of the Television Academy, passed away Thursday, July 18, at the age of 97.

Active professionally into his 80s, Chaloukian began his storied sound career at Ryder Sound Service in 1954, becoming an award-winning re-recording mixer and eventually the sole owner in 1976. He sold the company to the Soundelux Entertainment Group in 1997 and became the company's senior vice president.

In 2000, Liberty Media Group acquired Soundelux, which became Ascent Media Group, Creative Sound Services, and later a division of Discovery Communications known as CSS Studios, LLC. Chaloukian continued as the company's vice president of business development, representing its state-of-the-art divisions for feature films and television, and retiring shortly after the company's 2014 spinoff to become Todd Soundelux.

During his 60-year career in sound, Chaloukian and his staff at Ryder Sound won four national Emmys, two regional Emmys, and for his years of service to the Academy, he was honored with the Syd Cassyd Founder's Award in 2004. During his early tenure at Ryder, the company worked on sound for National Geographic specials, David Wolper Productions documentaries, classic television shows such as Lassie, Death Valley Days, Sea Hunt, Maverick, Route 66, Gunsmoke, and Jacques Cousteau specials. It also handled recording, re-recording and mixing for movies, including Bullitt, and releases from American International Pictures. Chaloukian personally oversaw sound design for The Graduate, and with his staff of audio engineers created the sound design for Easy Rider.

The company also contributed to the recording, rerecording, and mixing for Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown, Saturday Night Fever, and the first Star Trek movies. More prestigious television programs and additional sound contributions (ADR and Foley) followed on such notable films as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tootsie, and The Killing Fields. Chaloukian led the company to numerous Emmy wins, including the 1986 Emmy for Best Achievement in Sound for the television movie Cross of Fire. The same year, Ryder won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound for Platoon. Chaloukian served on the Motion Picture Academy Board in the 1970s, and after terming out, began a long association with the Television Academy. He served multiple terms on its Board of Governors, representing the Sound Peer Group and lending expertise in other leadership positions. He spearheaded the Academy's Building Committee from 1980 to 1991, overseeing the planning, ground-breaking, construction, and eventual move to the Academy's current headquarters in North Hollywood, California. Chaloukian served four years as Television Academy president (a position now known as the chair) from 1989 to 1993.

Chaloukian played an instrumental role in developing governing processes for the Academy aligned with the needs of an evolving television industry, creating Peer Group Executive Committees to help drive various professional concerns. He was also a long-standing director on the Television Academy's Foundation Board, and an enthusiastic booster of the Foundation's celebrated internship program, The Interviews (the Foundation's renowned collection of conversations with television industry icons) and its annual Golf Classic fundraiser.

Appointed to the California Film Commission in 1988, Chaloukian served under Governor George Deukmejian and Governor Pete Wilson.

Born June 18, 1927, to parents who immigrated to the U.S. due to the Armenian Genocide, Levon Chaloukian moved with his family from Chicago, Illinois, to a ranch in Agoura Hills, California, in 1939. As a young boy, he exercised horses for breeders and Hollywood stars, among them, Joel McCrea, and even won a few horse races in Tijuana. The family sold the ranch after the outbreak of WWII and moved to Los Angeles. In 1945, 17-year-old Chaloukian was called up for military service, forgoing an appearance in a school play with classmate Richard Crenna, as well as his Belmont High School graduation ceremony. He had recently enlisted in the Navy and was driven by his father to San Diego for training, where he was assigned to the battleship New York and subsequently deployed to Hawaii to help disable explosive mines at Pearl Harbor. Chaloukian later saw battle against Japanese combatants in the Philippines. (He finally participated in official graduation ceremonies with Belmont High's Class of 2017, just 10 days before his 90th birthday.)

After his Navy service, Chaloukian worked as a jeweler and acted in a couple of films, but a director remarked that he would be better working behind the scenes. After visiting his cousin who worked as a mixer at Ryder Sound, Chaloukian decided that was a career with possibilities.

Many of Chaloukian's career achievements and life exploits -- identifying four gunshots in an audio recording of President Kennedy's assassination, unknowingly supplying President Nixon with the equipment for his infamous Watergate recordings, innovations for recording sound underwater, creating sound effects for Raiders of the Los Ark, pioneering sound technology from tape to digital recording, mixing and editing -- can be found by visiting the Television Academy Foundation's The Interviews: An Oral History of Television.

"My dad had a passion for everything he did," recalled Kimme Chaloukian Black. "When he walked and graduated with the Belmont class of 2017, he said, 'Find what's in your heart, and never let it go. Don't let anybody tell you that you can't achieve your goals.'"

Chaloukian was preceded in death by his cherished wife and partner, Virginia (2020), and is survived by daughter Kimme Chaloukian Black and son Dale Chaloukian (who followed in his father's footsteps in sound editing); grandchildren Melissa von Hoffmann (Eric), Rachael Pugh (Kevin), Joshua Weinberg (Belle Martorano), Tara Tenenbaum (Ari), David Chaloukian (Kelsey); and great-grandchildren Joshua Swinney, Charlie Swinney, Aaron Tenenbaum, Emmet Pugh and Otis Ryder Pugh (named in honor of pioneering sound engineer Loren Ryder).

Memorial services will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Television Academy Foundation and its programs in memory of Leo Chaloukian.