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.
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 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.
By the 1960s, Little was taking his act to Toronto, where he performed at coffee houses, nightclubs, and other venues. They played a recording of Little for Garland and the show's musical director, Mel Tormé, and they 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 bonded over their love of old movies.
In 1966 and 1967, Little appeared in ABC-TV's Judy Carne sitcom Love on a Rooftop as the Willises' eccentric neighbour, Stan Parker. He appeared on That Girl in 1967 as a writer who impressed Marlo Thomas' character with his impersonations. He also 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. In 1969, he appeared in an episode of Petticoat Junction as newly engaged fiancé to Billie Jo in "Billie Jo and the Big Big Star".
thumb|left|200px|Little in a publicity photo for [[Hawaii Five-O (1968 TV series)|Hawaii Five-O, 1976]]
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.
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 was a semiregular 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, Jack Benny, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart and Kirk Douglas.
The Rich Little Show (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.
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.
Outside of any comedic context, Little's talent for impersonation has been used in movies when an actor's dialogue was impaired by poor health. When David Niven proved too ill for his voice to be used in his appearances in Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), Little provided the overdub as an imitation of Niven's voice. He performed similar duties to dub an imitation of James Cagney's stroke-impaired voice in the 1984 TV movie Terrible Joe Moran and in the 1991 TV special Christmas at the Movies by providing an uncredited dub for actor/dancer Gene Kelly, who had lost his voice.
He also lent his voice to the narration of three specials that were the forerunners for the animated series The Raccoons: The Christmas Raccoons (1980), The Raccoons on Ice (1981), and The Raccoons and the Lost Star (1983). His brother, Fred Little, voiced the character Cedric Sneer.
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., and Robert F. Kennedy. Little's performance was described as eclectic, impersonating Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln and doing Winston Churchill giving a rousing speech. That same year, he provided the voice of Crispy, the mascot of Post's Crispy Critters cereal.
The Tonight Show
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 also guest hosted the program about a dozen times. 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. In response to Little's claims, Fred DeCordova, Carson's producer, said they just were not interested in hiring him anymore due to his lack of new impressions.
Las Vegas career
Little has been appearing in Las Vegas since the mid-1960s, when he had dates at the Golden Nugget
With opportunities for him to work in television and film in decline, and his television work almost completely drying up by the mid-1980s, the focus of Little's career shifted from Hollywood to Las Vegas. After the death of Stewart in the late 1990s, Rich recorded the crosswalk messages for intersections in Stewart's hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania, using his imitation of the star's voice.
From 2015 until 2024, Little was a regular performer at the Laugh Factory in the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas. The Tropicana closed in April 2024 and was subsequently demolished to make way for a new stadium for the Athletics baseball team for when it moves to Las Vegas from Oakland in 2028. Little said he intended to move to the relocated Laugh Factory once a new site on the Las Vegas Strip was found for the club.
Since September 2025, Little has been in residency at the Tuscany Suites and Casino's Copa Room, performing his one-hour show three nights a week.
Other appearances since 2000
Little was the host for the 2007 White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Although President George W. Bush was reported to have enjoyed Little's performance, it was panned by some reviewers for "his ancient jokes and impressions of dead people (Johnny Carson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan)."
Little appeared as a guest star in Futurama season two episode "Raging Bender" and the film Futurama: Bender's Game, playing his own celebrity head, impersonating Howard Cosell.
In 2017, Little released his memoir, Little by Little: People I Have Known and Been. In 2021, CBS News Sunday Morning profiled Little; during the interview, he stated he believed it was the first time he had been on network television in 30 years, and hoped it would "go over well!"
In 2018, he appeared as himself in the documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead about Orson Welles' final film The Other Side of the Wind. Little was in the original 1974 cast but left for other commitments and his scenes were reshot with Peter Bogdanovich playing the part. Bogdanovich completed directing the film in 2018 after Welles died in 1985. Little is credited as a party guest in The Other Side of the Wind.
Little was a frequent guest on Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's talk show on the Trinity Broadcast Network, having appeared more often than any other guest. His last appearance was on the series finale, January 11, 2025.
Honours
Little was named "Comedy Star of the Year" by the American Guild of Variety Artists in 1974.
He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983.
He was inducted into the Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame in 2001.
Little was engaged to magician Melinda Saxe, but she broke-off the three-year relationship in 1991, saying she had discovered he had secretly videotaped them having sex in 1988. Saxe sued Little for defamation, invasion of privacy, and inflicting emotional distress, claiming he had joked about their relationship on stage. Little claimed the videotaping was consensual. The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court.
He married comedian and impressionist Jeannette Markey in 1994; they divorced in 1997. He 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. He 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, Little became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Politically, he is a conservative and has described himself as "basically a Republican", though his act has generally been non-partisan. In 2021, he asserted to the Daily Beast his belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 United States presidential election.
Little's older brother, Fred, was a social worker and voice actor who was the original voice of Cederic Sneer in The Raccoons. Fred Little also performed in smaller venues as an impressionist in his own right and appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on January 25, 1979, and an episode of An Evening at the Improv in 1990, both times with Rich Little hosting. Younger brother Chris was a commercial artist who designed the covers of Little's albums.