LOS ANGELES — Lee Marshall wasn’t born Tony the Tiger.

With his magnificent basso profundo reverberating in wrestling arenas and radio newsrooms for decades, he had to earn his stripes.

Marshall, who first voiced the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes icon in 1999, died April 26 at a Santa Monica hospital. He was 64 and had esophageal cancer, his son Jason Marshall VanBorssum said.

A sports broadcaster and a rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey as well as a ring announcer and voice over artist, Marshall spoke in deep, rich, practically evangelical tones that turned out to be ideal for selling cereal and a whole lot more.

“If God ever wanted to make a speech,” former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda once quipped, “Lee Marshall would get the call.”

The original Tony the Tiger was an actor named Thurl Ravenscroft, whose line “They’re g-r-r-r-e-a-t” resonated across the airwaves from 1952 until months before his 2005 death at age 91. In interviews, Marshall said he started helping out as Tony when Ravenscroft was in his 80s and had an increasingly difficult time with dialogue.