52 Facts About Rich Little

Richard Caruthers Little was born on November 26,1938 and is a Canadian-American comedian, impressionist and voice actor.

Sometimes known as the "Man of a Thousand Voices", Little has recorded nine comedy albums and made numerous television appearances, including three HBO specials.

Rich Little was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the middle of three sons.

Rich Little's father, Lawrence Peniston Little, was a surgeon who served as a lieutenant commander in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II and then worked for the Department of Veterans' Affairs until his death in 1959.

Rich Little's mother, Elizabeth Maud, was a housewife.

Rich Little's paternal great-grandfather, William Carruthers Little, was a Liberal-Conservative Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1881.

Rich Little was an usher at the Elgin Movie Theatre in Ottawa, where he perfected his voices while standing at the back of the theatre.

Rich Little started his amateur acting career at the Ottawa Little Theatre, winning his first acting award at the Eastern Ontario Drama Festival in Deep River, Ontario.

Rich Little became a relief announcer on Ottawa radio station CFRA and performed comedy sketches with Les Lye on Lye's morning show, before being hired as a disc jockey on CJET in Smiths Falls, Ontario.

In 1963, Rich Little issued two LPs through the Canadian division of Capitol Records: My Fellow Canadians with Les Lye.

The album was inspired by Vaughn Meader's hit American satirical album The First Family and concentrated on Canadian political satire, featuring Rich Little impersonating figures well-known to a Canadian audience such as Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Tommy Douglas, and Scrooge and the Stars, which featured Rich Little acting out Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol entirely on his own, playing all the roles as 22 different Hollywood stars, ranging from Jack Benny to Jack Webb.

The audition won him the job, and in January 1964, Rich Little made his American television debut on CBS's The Judy Garland Show, where he impressed Garland by imitating various male celebrities, including James Mason, who had been Garland's co-star in A Star Is Born.

In Canada, Little starred in his own show The Rich Little Show, on CBC Radio in 1966.

In 1965, Rich Little provided the voice for the Pink Panther in two cartoons, Sink Pink and Pink Ice; these two cartoons were made by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises to experiment with giving the Panther dialogue, contrary to him usually being mute.

In 1966 and 1967, Rich Little appeared in ABC-TV's Judy Carne sitcom Love on a Rooftop as the Willises' eccentric neighbour, Stan Parker.

Rich Little appeared on That Girl in 1967 as a writer who impressed Marlo Thomas' character with his impersonations.

Rich Little made two memorable appearances as accident-prone Brother Paul Leonardi on The Flying Nun in 1968; it marked one of his few appearances as a character actor rather than an impressionist.

Rich Little later appeared as Nixon on the soap opera Santa Barbara, in a 1991 fantasy sequence regarding Gina's ideal sperm donor.

In 2020, Little developed Trial on the Potomac: The Impeachment of Richard Nixon, a one-man show based on the 2015 book The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down by Geoff Shepard, alleging a conspiracy to remove Nixon from office.

Rich Little's best-known continuing TV series was The Kopycats, hour-long segments of The ABC Comedy Hour, broadcast in 1972.

Rich Little was a regular guest on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in the 1970s, appearing in 24 of the specials, where he roasted celebrities such as Don Rickles, Jack Benny, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart and Kirk Douglas.

The Rich Little Show on NBC and The New You Asked for It were attempts to present Little in his own person, away from his gallery of characterizations.

Rich Little appeared on a second-season episode of The Muppet Show.

In 1981, Rich Little appeared in a comedy LP called The First Family Rides Again, which was the fourth and final of the First Family comedy LPs originally created by Bob Booker and Earle Doud.

When David Niven proved too ill for his voice to be used in his appearances in Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, Rich Little provided the overdub as an imitation of Niven's voice.

Rich Little lent his voice to the narration of three specials that were the forerunners for the animated series The Raccoons: The Christmas Raccoons, The Raccoons on Ice, and The Raccoons and the Lost Star.

In 1987, during the We the People 200: The Constitutional Gala television special, Little personified various historical figures, including Franklin D Roosevelt, Edward R Murrow, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr.

Rich Little's performance was described as eclectic, impersonating Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln and doing Winston Churchill giving a rousing speech.

Rich Little was a frequent guest on variety and talk shows in the 1960s and 1970s, and had an unofficial monthly slot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for several years, and guest hosted the program about a dozen times.

Rich Little developed an impression of Johnny Carson, capturing The Tonight Show host's voice and many onstage mannerisms, and later played Carson in the HBO TV movie The Late Shift.

Rich Little had been doing the impression since the early 1970s, though, a decade prior to his bookings on the show coming to an end, including performing the impression to the Tonight Show' host's face when Carson was the guest of honor at The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast of Johnny Carson in 1973.

Rich Little has been appearing in Las Vegas since the mid-1960s, when he had dates at the Golden Nugget and went on to play at other Vegas venues such as The Sands, where he debuted in 1969 with a two-year contract.

Rich Little then appeared at the Desert Inn with Juliet Prowse for a month in 1974.

Rich Little's appearances continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s; he headlined at the Desert Inn for eight years in the late 1970s and 1980s, at the MGM Grand with Nell Carter in 1985; at Bally's, with Charo in 1986; the Sands in 1991 and 1992, and at the Golden Nugget again in 1991.

Rich Little sold his house in Los Angeles and relocated to Las Vegas in 1990, and bought a home in 1992, when he signed an exclusive, long-term contract with the Sahara, staging a revamped version of The Kopykats with other impersonators.

Rich Little later moved to Paris Las Vegas, where he starred in The Presidents, a play on nine Presidents of the United States from Kennedy to George W Bush, starting in 2002.

Since 2015, Rich Little has been a regular performer at the Laugh Factory in the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas.

Rich Little was the host for the 2007 White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Rich Little was in the original 1974 cast but left for other commitments and his scenes were reshot using Peter Bogdanovich playing the part.

Rich Little is credited as a party guest in The Other Side of the Wind.

Rich Little was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2022, with the rank of Officer.

Rich Little frequently appears on former Governor Mike Huckabee's cable show on the Trinity Broadcast Network.

Rich Little has been a guest more than any other person, appearing as recently as January 2023.

Rich Little has been active in several charities, including the Juvenile Diabetes Fund and the Children's Miracle Network.

Rich Little has been named to Miami Children's Hospital International Pediatrics Hall of Fame and been honoured by the naming of the Rich Little Special Care Nursery at Ottawa Civic Hospital.

Rich Little has been a major supporter in helping veterans through the Gary Sinise Foundation.

Rich Little was engaged to Canadian actress Jean Christopher in 1965, but they did not end up marrying.

Rich Little was married to Jeanne Worden, whom he met when she was working as a secretary on The Joey Bishop Show, in 1971.

Rich Little married comedian and impressionist Jeannette Markey in 1994; they divorced in 1997.

Rich Little was married to Marie Marotta from 2003 until her death in 2010 of a deliberate overdose of sleeping pills after years of suffering from migraines and chronic pain.

Rich Little married his fourth wife, Catherine Brown, a former reality show contestant, in a private ceremony in 2012; they divorced in October of that year.

In 2010, Rich Little became a naturalized citizen of the United States.