Biography | Peter Cullen — The Bonaventure Ballroom Where Television Named the Voice

For four decades the work lived in recording booths. On 17 December 2023 it was called to a hotel ballroom and given a statue.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences held the 2nd Annual Children's and Family Emmy Awards at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, 404 South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Frank Welker, who had received the same lifetime honour in 2016 and who had spent those same decades as Megatron opposite Cullen's Optimus Prime, presented the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Christopher Jackson hosted. The Harlem Globetrotters opened the night. The academy's own program named Cullen as the honoree before the doors opened.

Cullen had voiced the Autobot leader from the 1984 syndicated series through the live-action films and later series, and had been Eeyore for Disney since 1988. The citation treated that span as one career, not two novelties.

John Portman's glass cylinders opened as a hotel in January 1977. The building is a public landmark on Figueroa. The ceremony used its function rooms, not the revolving restaurant on the numbered top floor.

Cullen died at home in Los Angeles on 26 August 2026. That address is private and is not this pin. The last major public honour that can be stood in is this hotel.

Photo: the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, via Wikimedia Commons.