'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.

Source (w/pic):
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-fred-travalena30-2009jun30,0,653197\
.story