OBITUARY
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Impressionist Travalena Dead at 66
By Harry Kimball
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Posted Jun 29, 09 11:58 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Fred Travalena, a master impressionist whose catalog of voices ranged from US presidents to Frank Sinatra doing Boy George, has died at 66 of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the Los Angeles Times reports. The actor-singer-mimic, known as the "Man of a Thousand Faces," opened for the likes of Shirley Maclaine and Wayne Newton and was a frequent guest on the Johnny Carson-era Tonight Show.
Travalena also had a lucrative sideline in dubbing over movie obscenities for television broadcast and voiced characters in cartoons. A late career return to his singing roots had “Mr. Everybody” flummoxed. “That really scared me for a while,” he said in 1999. “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.”