Richard Caruthers Little (born November 26, 1938) 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.
Early life Little was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the middle of three sons, older brother Fred and younger brother Chris. His 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. His mother, Elizabeth (Betty) Maud (née Wilson), was a housewife who grew up in Sarnia, Ontario.
A third-generation Canadian, he is descended from English stock on his father's side and Irish on his mother's. On his mother's side, he is descended from John Willson, who was Speaker of the 5th Parliament of Upper Canada in the 1820s. His maternal grandfather was a judge. His paternal great-grandfather, William Carruthers Little, was a Liberal-Conservative Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1881.
He attended Lisgar Collegiate Institute. In his early teens, he formed a partnership with Geoff Scott, another budding impressionist (and future elected politician), concentrating on reproducing the voices of Canadian politicians such as Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton.
Career Early career in Canada Starting when he was 11, Little acted in two documentary movies for Crawley Films of Ottawa.
Little was an usher at the Elgin Theatre in Ottawa, where he perfected his voices while standing at the back of the theatre. He 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 for his role as “Bo Decker” in the play Bus Stop. At 17, he and his friend and fellow impressionist Geoff Scott won a talent contest on station CBOT in Ottawa, the first time he was paid for his impressionist skills, which led to an appearance on Pick the Stars, a national talent contest broadcast by CBC Television in 1956, where the duo tied for first place. This, in turn, led to an appearance on The Jackie Rae Show during the 1956–57 season during which Little premiered his impression of Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton to a national audience.
Little and Scott's comedy team performed at various local events and venues. Still in their teens, they developed a 10-minute act that they performed at Shriners' conventions and Knights of Columbus meetings. Scott later entered journalism, and ultimately politics.
Little began as a relief announcer on Ottawa radio station CFRA as a student during his summer vacations. He also performed comedy sketches with Les Lye on Lye's morning show. In the early 1960s, he was hired as a disc jockey on CJET in Smiths Falls, Ontario. His afternoon-evening shift ran from 4 to 8pm weekdays, and the show gave him the opportunity to use his impressions on the air. In 1961, for 26 weeks, he co-hosted Folderol a half-hour suppertime show of light humour and interviews on television station CBOT.
By the 1960s, Little was taking his act to Toronto, where he performed at coffee houses, nightclubs, and other venues.
In 1963, Little issued two LPs through the Canadian division of Capitol Records. The first was My Fellow Canadians with his radio partner, Les Lye. The album was inspired by Vaughn Meader's hit American satirical album The First Family and concentrated on Canadian political satire, featuring Little impersonating figures well known to a Canadian audience such as Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Tommy Douglas. His second album was Scrooge and the Stars, which featured 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 album was released in early November, but it was withdrawn a few weeks later due to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as Little had imitated JFK in the role of the Spirit of Christmas Present and had Kennedy say the line "Scrooge, my life upon the globe is brief; it ends tonight. In fact, it ends as fast as you can say your name."
Little continued to build his reputation in Canada through appearances on CBC radio and television before moving permanently to the United States in late 1965 though he would continue to make appearances in Canada. In 1966, he starred in his own CBC Radio comedy series, The Rich Little Show.
Breaking into the US Little's first performance in the United States was in December 1963 at Guy Lombardo's inn and country club in Tierra Verde, Florida.
Before entering the American market, Little had performed impressions on Canadian radio and television. After CJOH-TV began broadcasting in Ottawa in 1961, he appeared on the station impersonating celebrities such as Ed Sullivan and John Wayne. He subsequently worked as a disc jockey and talk-show host at CJET in Smiths Falls, Ontario, where his programmes also incorporated celebrity impressions.
Little's American career was helped by Peppiatt and Aylesworth, a Canadian writing team who had moved to Hollywood and worked on various specials and variety series, including The Judy Garland Show. Familiar with Little's work in Canada, Peppiatt had worked on The Jackie Rae Show, on which Little made a television appearance at 17, and the team had written Little's original Canadian nightclub act and would write much of his American material in the 1960s. They played a recording of Little for Garland and the show's musical director, Mel Tormé, and encouraged her to audition him. Tormé had met Little when they both performed on an episode of Parade, a CBC Television variety show in Toronto, and the two bonded over their interest in old films.
The audition won him the job, and in January 1964 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.Rich Little on "The Judy Garland Show, 1964". 8 min. Television appearances on variety programmes hosted by Jackie Gleason, Rudy Vallée, Mike Douglas, George Burns, and Al Hirt followed over the next two years.
Peppiatt and Aylesworth also helped bring Little onto other American programmes for which they wrote, such as The Jimmy Dean Show, The Kopykats, and The Julie Andrews Hour, and continued to write material for his act after he moved permanently to the United States at the end of 1965.
Little made his first appearances on The Dean Martin Show and The Jimmy Dean Show during the 1965–1966 season.
By the late 1960s, he was making frequent appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Hollywood Squares, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Nixon During the 1970s, Little made many television appearances portraying American President Richard Nixon, and once performed his impersonation in front of Nixon himself, who Little says did not realize he was imitating him at all and "wondered why I was talking to him in such a funny voice." In 1972, he portrayed Richard Nixon with the voice and mannerisms of Oliver Hardy in Another Nice Mess. Little later appeared as Nixon on the soap opera Santa Barbara, in a 1991 fantasy sequence regarding Gina's ideal sperm donor. In 1992, he voiced Nixon in the animated film Bébé's Kids.
Little was part of an April Fool's Day prank in 1992 when he appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation as Nixon announcing his candidacy for president in the 1992 United States presidential election using the slogan "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Listeners flooded NPR with calls expressing outrage at the announcement, which NPR did not reveal as a hoax until the second half of the program.
In 2020, Little developed Trial on the Potomac: The Impeachment of Richard Nixon, a play 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. Little performed the show Off Broadway for a five-week run in 2021.
1970s Little appeared in the feature film The Phynx (1970). He was a semi-regular on the Emmy-winning ABC-TV variety series The Julie Andrews Hour in 1972–73. In response to his imitation of Jack Benny, the comedian sent Little an 18-carat gold money clip containing this message: "With Bob Hope doing my walk and you doing my voice, I can be a star and do nothing."
Little's best-known continuing TV series was The Kopycats, hour-long segments of The ABC Comedy Hour, broadcast in 1972. Taped in England, these comedy-variety shows consisted entirely of celebrity impersonations, with the actors in full costume and makeup for every sketch. The cast included Little, Frank Gorshin, Marilyn Michaels, George Kirby, British comedian Joe Baker, Fred Travalena, Charlie Callas, and Peter Goodwright.
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 (1975–1976) on NBC and The New You Asked for It (1981) were attempts to present Little in his own persona, away from his gallery of characterizations. Little also appeared on a second-season episode of The Muppet Show.
The one-man show Rich Little's Christmas Carol was his first HBO special, produced by and originally aired on CBC Television in December 1978 and airing on HBO in 1979. Little portrayed famous comedians in established roles (W. C. Fields as Ebenezer Scrooge, Paul Lynde as Bob Cratchit, et al.). The special won an International Emmy Award and a Rose d'Or award.
1980s In 1981, 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 David Arvedon, and Earle Doud. Little starred along with Melanie Chartoff, Michael Richards, Shelley Hack, Jenilee Harrison, Earle Doud, and Vaughn Meader, making light of U.S. President Ronald Reagan's first few months in the White House.
Little hosted a syndicated revival of the human interest show, You Asked For It from 1981 to 1982. Little also appeared in dramatic and comedy series including Fantasy Island, CHiPs, Police Woman, MacGyver, Murder, She Wrote, The Love Boat, The Nanny, and Santa Barbara. He also appeared in the movies Dirty Tricks (1981), and Happy Hour (1987) and performed voice work in Better Off Dead (1985).
Another HBO special followed in 1983 with Rich Little's Robin Hood, including portrayals of Groucho Marx as Robin Hood, Humphrey Bogart as Prince John, John Wayne as Little John, Carol Channing as Maid Marion, Laurel and Hardy as Sheriffs of Nottingham, George Burns as Alan-a-Dale, and various other characters.
In June 1984, Little returned to Canada to perform at the nationally televised farewell gala honouring Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at the Liberal Party's leadership convention in Ottawa. The gala, held on June 14, featured entertainers including Paul Anka, Maureen Forrester and Little, and preceded Trudeau's farewell address as Liberal leader.
Outside a comedic context, Little was also employed as a voice double when actors were unable to complete dialogue because of illness. He imitated David Niven for the actor's appearances in Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), provided the voice of James Cagney in the television film Terrible Joe Moran (1984) after Cagney had suffered a stroke, and supplied an uncredited voice dub for Gene Kelly in the 1991 television special Christmas at the Movies after Kelly had lost his voice.