OT: RIP Fred Travalina
Traci
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090629/ap_en_tv/us_obit_travalena_1
Impressionist, Vegas headliner Fred Travalena dies
LOS ANGELES ? Impressionist Fred Travalena, a headliner in Vegas
showrooms and a regular on late-night talk shows with his takes on
presidents, crooners and screen stars, has died in Los Angeles. He was
66.
Publicist Roger Neal says Travalena died Sunday at his home in the
Encino area after a recurrence of the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that first
surfaced in 2002.
Travalena was known for the sheer volume of celebrities he imitated,
leading to the nicknames "The Man of a Thousand Voices" and "Mr.
Everybody."
His act included presidents from Kennedy to Obama, musicians from Frank
Sinatra to Bruce Springsteen and actors from Marlon Brando to Tom
Cruise.
The Bronx native started his career in Las Vegas in 1971.
Greg Evans
> Bad week to be even a minor celebrity.....
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> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090629/ap_en_tv/us_obit_travalena_1
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> Impressionist, Vegas headliner Fred Travalena dies
Wow, no kidding, they're dropping like flies. This ruins one of my
favorite jokes (which no one else finds funny). You know, the one
about a pack of wild Fred Travalenas rooting around in my garden.
Greg
Sally
Dropping like flies indeed. It's like some kind of karmic massacre. We
ought to start prognosticating on who's going to die next. Anxiety-
prone people will fear for their favorite stars, I'm sure. Hence,
Clint Eastwood, God forbid. (Biting my tongue, poo-poo.) Hope that
mentioning him will keep him safe. There was a TV salesman named Mays
who was a great success as a TV seller of a variety of goods. He's
gone. Among the recently deceased. This is awful! The guy was
relatively young. Hope Carl Reiner is taking vitamins.
Sally
kat...@earthlink.net
'The Man of a Thousand Faces' could voice Bugs Bunny as well as
Luciano Pavarotti. Travalena, a Vegas performer, talk-show regular and
star of his own specials, died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Fred Travalena, the master impressionist and singer whose broad
repertoire of voices ranged from Jack Nicholson to Sammy Davis Jr. to
Bugs Bunny, has died. He was 66.
Travalena, who began being treated for an aggressive form of non-
Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2002 and saw the disease return last July after
going into remission in 2003, died Sunday at his home in Encino,
according to his publicist, Roger Neal. Travalena also was diagnosed
with prostate cancer in 2003 but had been in complete remission since
then.
Dubbed "The Man of a Thousand Faces" and "Mr. Everybody," Travalena
emerged on the national stage as an impressionist in the early 1970s.
Over the next three decades, he was a headliner in Las Vegas, Reno and
Atlantic City, performed in concerts around the country, appeared on
"The Tonight Show" and other talk shows and starred in his own
specials, such as "The Many Faces of Fred Travalena" and "Comedy in
the Oval Office."
The boyish-faced entertainer is said to have had a repertoire of more
than 360 celebrity, political and cartoon-character voices, including
Clint Eastwood, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Henry
Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Johnny Mathis, Bruce Springsteen and
Luciano Pavarotti.
"I've known impressionists who have reached a wall where they can't do
any more [voices]," Travalena told the Omaha World Herald in 1996. "I
don't have that problem, thank God."
In one part of his act, Travalena physically and vocally "morphed"
into all of the U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy up to George W.
Bush.
He also was known to sing "Have I Told You Lately" in various voices,
including Kermit the Frog ("Have I told you lately that I love you"),
Katharine Hepburn ("Have I told you there's no one else above you")
and Frank Sinatra ("You fill my heart with gladness . . . ")
The imaginative entertainer even did Sinatra imitating Boy George.
Of Italian and Irish heritage, Travalena was born Oct. 6, 1942, in the
Bronx, N.Y., and grew up on Long Island.
When it came to impressions, he had an early role model: his father, a
onetime entertainer who sang and performed comedy and impressions.
"He got me doing church shows when I was just a little kid," Travalena
recalled in a 1998 interview on "The Crier Report" on Fox News
Network. "I used to do an impression of [singer] Johnny Ray."
In school, he said, he learned to deal with bullies by imitating a
Martian voice or Porky Pig. And he found he could deflect a teacher's
question of why he didn't do his homework by making her laugh with his
impression of Crazy Guggenheim, the goofy character played on TV by
Frank Fontaine during Jackie Gleason's "Joe the Bartender" sketches.
During a stint in the Army's Special Services, Travalena won the All-
Army Entertainment Award for best singer and once impersonated
President Lyndon Johnson's voice on the base theater's answering
machine to announce the movies and show times.
Although he told the New York Times in 1989 that he was "headed for
the commercial art field," Travalena said: "That wasn't getting me up
in the morning, and I couldn't get show business out of my mind."
At one point after launching his career as a singer, he and his singer
wife, Lois, were performing together at Andrews Air Force Base near
Washington, D.C.
As recounted in a 1989 New York Times story, Lois surprised her
husband by spontaneously asking the audience, "How'd you like to hear
Fred do impressions?"
He went on to impersonate Dean Martin, Paul Lynde, Jim Nabors and
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
"People liked it," he later said.
Travalena reportedly was performing at a resort hotel in the Catskills
when impressionist Rich Little was in the audience. After the show,
Little congratulated Travalena and later recommended him for a spot in
British celebrity journalist David Frost's show at the Riviera in Las
Vegas.
Travalena joined Little, Frank Gorshin and other impressionists as a
regular on the "ABC Comedy Hour," the 1972 comedy-variety show, which
was known in reruns as the "ABC Comedy Hour Presents the Kopycats."
In 1974, he opened for Shirley MacLaine at the old MGM Grand and later
opened for other Vegas performers such as Mathis, Davis, Wayne Newton
and Andy Williams.
Travalena's talent for vocal mimicry led to a side career dubbing
offensive dialogue in feature films bound for airing on television --
including Pesci in "Casino," De Niro in "Brazil" and Sean Connery in
"Just Cause."
Travalena made occasional guest appearances on TV series such as "The
Love Boat" and "Murphy Brown," as well as on "Hollywood Squares" and
other game shows. He also did voices on a number of TV cartoon series
and appeared in the 1978 movie "The Buddy Holly Story."
In more recent years, he turned to songwriting and singing and
released CDs including "We All Need Love Today" and "The Spirit of
America."
For a man of so many voices, re-finding his own voice as a singer was
something of a challenge.
"That really scared me for awhile," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal
in 1999. "I'd wanted to expand into singing, and two years ago I told
my drummer to book a studio. The night before the session, I was ready
to cancel.
"I asked myself, 'Who is Fred Travalena? Where is that 19-year-old kid
who was a singer? What is my sound?' I just had to get used to it."
Travalena received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.
He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Lois; sons Fred IV and Corey;
and a granddaughter, Sophia.
Funeral services will be private
A public memorial service is being planned.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-fred-travalena30-2009jun30,0,653197.story
I enjoyed him on the Mike Douglas Show. Here he is during
Impressionist Week:
Phil McCracken
wrote:
Rumor has it that ol' Walter Cronkite isn't doing too well these days.
Sally
> On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:15:27 -0700 (PDT), Sally <SallyDr...@aol.com>
>
> - Show quoted text -
I know. He was seated in The Russian Tea Room one lunchtime when I
went in after a music lesson in Manhattan in the late seventies. When
I spotted him, I waved enthusiastically. He waved back with equal
enthusiasm and a big smile. He has a good sense of humor. :) Lots of
musicians had lunch there, btw. I sing, but since nobody would know
that, I brought along my violin case a couple of times. I was treated
nicely with or without the violin case, happy to report.
I certainly hope that Walter won't be next. I really ought to write a
book about famous people I almost met.
Sally