Little recalls the great ones

Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

When: 7 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays beginning Dec. 27

Where: Golden Nugget's Theatre Ballroom

Tickets: $39; 385-7111

Rich Little's cast of characters. About 99 percent of them are dead.

Alan Ladd

Alastair Sim

Alfred Hitchcock

Al Jolson

Andy Rooney

Anthony Newley

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Art Carney

Bela Lugosi

Bill Clinton

Bing Crosby

Bobby Kennedy

Bob Dole

Boris Karloff

Broderick Crawford

Bugs Bunny

Burt Lancaster

Carol Channing

Carroll O'Connor

Cary Grant

Charles Bickford

Charles Bronson

Charlton Heston

Clark Gable

Claude Rains

Daffy Duck

Dana Andrews

Danny De Vito

David Brinkley

David Janssen

David Niven

Dean Martin

Dennis Day

Dennis Weaver

Don Adams

Donald Duck

Don Rickles

Dr. Phil

Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Dwight Eisenhower

Edgar Buchanan

Ed Sullivan

Edward G. Robinson

Elmer Fudd

Elvis Presley

Ernest Borgnine

Foster Brooks

Fozzie Bear

Frank Fontaine

Frank Sinatra

Fred Flintstone

Fred MacMurray

Gabby Hayes

Gary Cooper

Gene Kelly

George Burns

George H.W. Bush

George C. Scott

George Raft

George W. Bush

Gerald Ford

Glen Campbell

Glenn Ford

Gregory Peck

Groucho Marx

Henry Fonda

Henry Kissinger

Howard Cosell

Howard Keel

Hubert Humphrey

Humphrey Bogart

Jack Benny

Jack Hawkins

Jackie Gleason

Jack Lemmon

Jack Nicholson

Jack Paar

Jack Webb

James Arness

James Cagney

Jean Stapleton

Jerry Vale

Jim Backus

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Rogers

Jimmy Stewart

John F. Kennedy

John Houseman

Johnny Carson

Johnny Cash

John Wayne

Jonathan Winters

Jose Ferrer

Joseph Cotten

Kenny Rogers

Kermit the Frog

Kirk Douglas

Lawrence Welk

Liberace

Lionel Barrymore

Lloyd Bridges

Lone Ranger and Tonto

Louis Armstrong

Lyndon Johnson

Marlon Brando

Maurice Chevalier

Mel Torme

Michael Caine

Mickey Mouse

Miss Piggy

Nat King Cole

Neil Diamond

Oliver Hardy

Orson Welles

Pat Boone

Paul Lynde

Perry Como

Peter Falk

Peter Graves

Peter Lorre

Peter Sellers

Popeye

Porky Pig

Raymond Burr

Red Skelton

Rex Harrison

Ricardo Montalban

Richard Burton

Richard Nixon

Robert Goulet

Robert Stack

Robin Leach

Rodney Dangerfield

Rod Steiger

Rod Serling

Roger Livesey

Ronald Colman

Ronald Reagan

Ross Perot

Roy Rogers

Spiro Agnew

Stan Laurel

Sterling Hayden

Stewart Granger

Sylvester Stallone

Ted Kennedy

Ted Koppel

Telly Savalas

Tom Jones

Tony Bennett

Tony Randall

Trevor Howard

Truman Capote

Van Heflin

Vincent Price

Walter Brennan

Walter Cronkite

Walter Matthau

Walter Pidgeon

W.C. Fields

William Holden

Winston Churchill

Rich Little relaxes on the deeply padded sofa in the dressing room built for Frank Sinatra when Ol' Blue Eyes performed at the Golden Nugget in the mid-'80s.

The room is softly lighted, comfortable. The walls are decorated with photos of dozens of celebrities - Sinatra, Mia Farrow and Marilyn Monroe among them.

"He wouldn't open unless he had a dressing room," Little says of Sinatra as he waits to make his entrance into the Theatre Ballroom. "I think they were going to have him change in an elevator. He said no way."

Steve Wynn owned the Nugget back then - he bought a controlling interest in 1972 and sold it to MGM Mirage in 2000. It has had two more owners since then. Currently Landry's Restaurants Inc. owns the property. The jewel of downtown cost a whopping $1 million to build and opened in 1946. Landry's recently spent $100 million renovating the resort, including the showroom, but not the dressing room.

"I performed here 18 years ago," Little recalls. "One time. It's quite different."

In Sinatra's day the room was more like an intimate nightclub, seating 300 or so. It evolved into a theaterlike room with 400 removable seats. Its latest incarnation has theater seats in tiered rows.

Little resumes his show at the Golden Nugget on Dec. 27 for at least six months, maybe a year if the numbers hold up.

"I'm very happy with the arrangement," he says. "At first I had reservations. I played here before and didn't do that well. You've got to advertise. You've got to publicize. It's been pretty good this time, but it could be better. I love the seating. I'm not four-walling. If I last six months, great. If I last a year, great."

The 69-year-old Little has lasted a long time in show business, starting out in small clubs in his native Canada and graduating to radio. In the early '60s, he migrated to the United States and found stardom doing impressions on shows for Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Glen Campbell, Dean Martin and others.

He does a couple of hundred impressions, mostly older or deceased celebrities and politicians. He's frustrated with the new class of performers. They're hard to imitate. They don't have the distinctive characteristics in their voices and mannerisms that the old-timers had.

Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio are bland and colorless compared with Walter Brennan, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart.

Stewart is Little's favorite. Eventually they became friends and now Little is on the board of directors of the James M. Stewart Museum Foundation in Indiana, Pa.

"Jimmy Stewart was, as a kid, my favorite," Little says. "I just thought he was the best there was. Really, that was the first impression I ever did and it may be my best, although a lot of people can do him. Later on I worked with him on the 'Julie Andrews Show' and we became friends. I did a lot of charity work with him. He kidded me about imitating him."

In 2003 the Stewart Museum Foundation gave Little the Harvey Award, named for the invisible rabbit in the 1950 film "Harvey." The award goes annually to someone the foundation judges to have continued Stewart's tradition in the performing arts.

"I told him before he died I would like to do a one-man show about him," Little says. "He said, 'Is Harvey going to be in there?' and I say, 'Yeah.' And he says, 'That's good.' He always wanted to pretend Harvey was there. If you did that when you were around him, he went right along with it. If you came to an elevator and told him wait, Harvey wanted to go down first, he'd say, 'Harvey, I'm sorry.' And he'd stand back to let Harvey pass."

Little is serious about a Stewart one-man show.

"I wrote it myself and I'll be the only person in it so I won't have any expenses," Little says. "I will do it onstage with little sets. I'm on the board of the Jimmy Stewart Museum so we can probably play it there for three or four months, then take it on the road."

His would be a one-man show, but with a cast of a dozen.

"A lot of one-man shows are boring," Little says. "In my Stewart show I have several voices - on the phone or coming over a PA system. A two-way conversation with Henry Fonda. A two-hour monologue is boring."

That's why he turned down the one-man show about George Burns that went to Broadway. Frank Gorshin eventually got the role.

"He was great, but it was still boring," Little says. "People tend to nod off."

He plans to pursue the Stewart production when his gig at the Golden Nugget ends.

"I'm thinking about giving up nightclubs altogether," Little says. "I would like to do more symphonies."

Symphonies. Performing arts centers. He could do a couple of hundred one-man shows based on the voices he can do with symphonies and at performing arts centers.

"I have a symphony show I would like to do - all the great music from the great films and I take the speeches from the films and read them as the star who spoke them," Little says. " 'Casablanca,' 'An Affair to Remember.' "

Little was inspired by the movies to begin doing impressions.

"Today they don't write a lot of great movies, not like '40s, '50s and '60s," he says. "Today when you walk out of a movie you don't remember hardly anything. You don't come out humming anything."

It's all car chases, crashes, martial arts, gunfights and technology, he says. "It's all action."

Little would have liked to have been an actor. He started out in community theater when he was a kid. He was in a couple of movies, a guest star on some TV series, but he says his managers never pushed it.

"People put you in a slot and that's where you make your money," Little says. "My agency said I made my money in clubs. I wouldn't make that much money in films."

In recent years he has been performing in casinos across the country and in showrooms in retirement communities in Florida.

"That's a mixed bag, in Florida," Little says. "One night you may be performing in a hallway and the next in a gorgeous theater. But it's all good."

It's time for Little to go on. He'll perform some of his most memorable voices - Stewart, Wayne, Edith and Archie Bunker, George Burns, Johnny Carson and Robert Goulet.

Before he leaves he talks about Goulet, who died in October. They were friends for decades.

"We had the same birthday," Little says. "Nov. 26. We usually celebrated together."

He's saddened by his friend's passing.

"Who's going to replace all of these great entertainers?" he says, going onstage to try to keep them alive.

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