Another one bites the dust - impressionist Fred Travalena has passed away

Cafe Society
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Fred Travalena, noted celebrity impressionist, passed away Sunday from cancer. Travalena, 66, was known as “The Man With A Thousand Faces.” He appeared frequently on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Late Show with David Letterman, and on numerous game shows, and was 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.

Travalena had a side career dubbing in clean dialogue to replace offensive words in feature films bound for airing on television – including Pesci in “Casino,” De Niro in “Brazil” and Sean Connery in “Just Cause.”

He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2002. He saw it go into remission in 2003, only to see it return last July.

Article here.

Here’s a video from YouTube of Travalena performing on Letterman.

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I was never old enough to stay up and watch him on Carson, but I do remember him quite a bit from the various game shows of the era (Match Game, Make Me Laugh, etc.)

RIP.

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[Carson] I did not know that. [/Carson]

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I saw him once and thought he was really funny. But is he a big enough star to complete the newest celebrity triad?

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Who’s he doing an impression of now?

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Generalissimo Franco! :stuck_out_tongue:

I know he wasn’t exactly a household name, probably not even as famous as Frank Caliendo, but I thought he’d been around long enough to be semi-familiar. He wasn’t exactly high profile, but I thought someone would remember him.

I thought that bit where he imitated nine presidents reciting the oath of office in succession was pretty funny.