fred travalena

fred travalena

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.

billy mays dead fox news

billy mays dead fox news

Brash TV pitchman Billy Mays, whose ubiquitous ads for household products like OxiClean and Orange Glo made him a pop icon, was found dead at his Tampa home on Sunday morning.

The booming-voiced Mays, 50, died just hours after suffering a blow to the head during a rough plane landing on a US Airways flight.

It was unclear whether the bumpy landing contributed to Mays' death, but he complained about not feeling well before going to bed.

"All of a sudden as we hit, you know, it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping," Mays told Fox 13 in Tampa. "It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head."

He wrote on Twitter: "Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing. Stuck in the plane on the runway. You can always count on US Air."

Mays' wife, Deborah, found him in bed at their home and called 911 when she couldn't revive him around 7:45a.m.

Tampa police said there were no signs of foul play.

Police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said any connection between the rough landing and Mays' death would "purely be speculation."

There were no reported injuries at the time of the landing. An autopsy will be done on Mays today.

"My dad didn't wake up this morning," Mays' son Billy, 22, wrote on Twitter. "It hasn't yet hit me but it's about to."

"He's gone. I'm gonna be strong for him," he later added. "I'm thankful I got to talk to my dad last night. I miss him immensely already. But I feel him with me."

Mays had no known major health problems, although he walked with a limp and was planning to have hip replacement surgery.

"Although Billy lived a public life, we don't anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days," Deborah Mays said in a statement. "Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times."

Billy Mays, who was born in McKees Rocks, Pa., got his start peddling products on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and never stopped hustling.

He detailed his philosophy in a visit to the Daily News this month: "Life's a pitch, and then you buy."

Mays flashed his trademark smile and spoke in a toned-down version of his usual booming voice.

"I compare myself to a big-league slugger, a quarterback, the doctor who delivers the baby," he said. "I'm not an inventor, but I'll take your product to the next level."

He also had many admirers in his Tampa neighborhood, like Korene Shelton, 30, a bartender at Hula Bay, which Mays and his wife frequented.

"It was so neat that he was so approachable and it was so neat to spend some time with him," Shelton said. "It's been a week of shock after shock. With him being local it hit even harder."

Mays starred with partner Andrew Sullivan in a Discovery Channel reality show "Pitchmen," which followed the infomercial kings as they searched for new inventions to plug.

"I hate to say it," Sullivan said. "But the king is dead."

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