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.
