LOS ANGELES — Fred Travalena, the master impressionist and singer whose broad repertoire of voices varied 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 Los Angeles, according to his publicist, Roger Neal.
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 and Reno Nev., and Atlantic City, N.J., performed in concerts around the country, appeared on “The Tonight Show” and other talk shows, and starred in his own specials.
He 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.
The boyish-faced entertainer was said to have had a repertoire of more than 360 celebrity, political and cartoon-character voices, including Clint Eastwood, Dr. Ruth West heimer, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Johnny Mathis, 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.”
Of Italian and Irish heritage, Travalena was born Oct. 6, 1942, in the Bronx, N.Y., and grew up on Long Island.
His father was a one-time entertainer who sang and did comedy and impressions.
“He got me doing church shows when I was just a little kid,” Travalena recalled in a 1998 interview.
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.
After launching his career as a singer, he and his singer wife, Lois, were performing at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. Lois surprised her husband by 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 John F. Kennedy and Johnson.
“People liked it,” he later said.
He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Lois; sons Fred IV and Corey; and a granddaughter.
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