Rich Little

Richard Caruthers Little was born on November 26, 1938, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the middle of three sons between his older brother Fred and younger brother Chris. His father, Lawrence Peniston Little, was a surgeon who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II and subsequently worked for the Department of Veterans' Affairs until his death in 1959. His mother, Elizabeth Maud Little, née Wilson, was raised in Sarnia, Ontario. A third-generation Canadian of English descent on his father's side and Irish on his mother's, Little counts among his ancestors John Willson, who served as Speaker of the 5th Parliament of Upper Canada in the 1820s, and his paternal great-grandfather William Carruthers Little, a Liberal-Conservative Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1881. His maternal grandfather was a judge. Little attended Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa.

Little began performing at an early age, acting in two documentary films for Crawley Films of Ottawa starting at age eleven. He worked as an usher at the Elgin Theatre, where he developed his vocal impressions, and launched his amateur stage career at the Ottawa Little Theatre. He won his first acting award at the Eastern Ontario Drama Festival in Deep River, Ontario, for the role of Bo Decker in Bus Stop. At seventeen, he and fellow impressionist Geoff Scott won a talent contest on Ottawa's CBOT radio station, earning his first payment for impressionist work. The win led to an appearance on Pick the Stars, a national CBC Television talent contest in 1956, where the pair tied for first place. That exposure brought Little onto The Jackie Rae Show during the 1956–57 season, where he introduced his impression of Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton to a national audience. In his early teens, Little and Scott had already built a ten-minute act performed at Shriners' conventions and Knights of Columbus meetings, concentrating on the voices of Canadian politicians including Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Mayor Whitton.

Little worked as a relief announcer at Ottawa radio station CFRA during summer vacations and performed comedy sketches with Les Lye on Lye's morning program. In the early 1960s he took a disc jockey position at CJET in Smiths Falls, Ontario, working a weekday afternoon-to-evening shift that allowed him to incorporate impressions on air. In 1961 he co-hosted Folderol, a half-hour suppertime television program on CBOT, for twenty-six weeks. By the mid-1960s he was performing at Toronto coffee houses and nightclubs. In 1963 he released two albums through the Canadian division of Capitol Records: My Fellow Canadians, a political satire record made with Les Lye featuring impressions of figures such as Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, and Tommy Douglas, and Scrooge and the Stars, in which Little performed all roles in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol as twenty-two different Hollywood personalities. The second album was withdrawn shortly after its November release following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as Little had voiced Kennedy in the role of the Spirit of Christmas Present.

Little made his first American performance in December 1963 at Guy Lombardo's inn and country club in Tierra Verde, Florida. His entry into the American television market was facilitated by the Canadian writing team of Peppiatt and Aylesworth, who had relocated to Hollywood and were working on productions including The Judy Garland Show. They played a recording of Little for Garland and musical director Mel Tormé, who had previously appeared with Little on the CBC Television variety program Parade in Toronto. The audition secured Little a spot on the show, and in January 1964 he made his American television debut on CBS's The Judy Garland Show, impersonating male celebrities including James Mason. Appearances on programs hosted by Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Rudy Vallee, Mike Douglas, George Burns, and Al Hirt followed over the next two years. Peppiatt and Aylesworth also brought him onto The Jimmy Dean Show, The Kopykats, and The Julie Andrews Hour, and continued writing material for his act after he relocated permanently to the United States at the end of 1965.

In 1965, Little provided the voice of the Pink Panther in two DePatie-Freleng Enterprises cartoons, Sink Pink and Pink Ice, produced as an experiment in giving the typically silent character dialogue. In 1966 he starred in his own program, The Rich Little Show, on CBC Radio, and during the 1965–66 season made his first appearances on The Dean Martin Show and The Jimmy Dean Show. From 1966 to 1967 he appeared in the ABC sitcom Love on a Rooftop as the eccentric neighbor Stan Parker. He appeared on That Girl in 1967 as a writer who demonstrated his impressions for Marlo Thomas' character, and made two appearances as Brother Paul Leonardi on The Flying Nun in 1968, a role notable for casting him as a character actor rather than an impressionist. In 1969 he appeared in an episode of Petticoat Junction as a newly engaged fiancé to the character Billie Jo.

Throughout the 1970s, Little became widely associated with his portrayal of President Richard Nixon, appearing in that capacity on numerous television programs. In 1972 he portrayed Nixon with the voice and mannerisms of Oliver Hardy in Another Nice Mess. He later appeared as Nixon in a 1991 fantasy sequence on the soap opera Santa Barbara. In 1992 he participated in an April Fool's Day prank on NPR's Talk of the Nation, performing as Nixon. Little has recorded nine comedy albums in total and made numerous television appearances, including three HBO specials, earning him the informal designation the Man of a Thousand Voices.

On Broadway, Little appeared in 2002 in Hollywood Arms.