 Sometimes, I wish I could do celebrity voice impersonations like my friend Larry Turner. It’s a good way to meet women.
You’ve really gotta watch this guy in action to appreciate his incredible talent. He’ll go into a grocery store or a bank or even the doctor’s office, walk right up to a complete stranger and start up a conversation – talking like a famous celebrity.
This man has no fear. He’d walk up to Bella Abzug and tell her that her hat looked like a reject from the Salvation Army. Or tell Pamela Anderson that she could get arrested for going grocery shopping without wearing a bra. Or ask Donald Trump if he was wearing a hairpiece.
 The thing that makes Larry different from any other person I know having a conversation with a complete stranger is the manner in which he does it. He might stroll over to the hat department in a men’s store and get the salesman’s attention by laying a little John Wayne on him, like: “Well, hello there, Pilgrim, I’d like to get me one of them Texas sombreros you got over there. You think you’ve got one for a big guy with a big head?”
Or, maybe when some lady pushed her cart in front of him intentionally in the grocery store checkout line, raising his ire, he’d come off the wall with his “Hey, I don’t get no respect” Rodney Dangerfield routine and have everybody in the store laughing their butts off.
One time he spotted a woman, who looked like Imelda Marcos, primping in a posh jewelry department of a popular store. He casually sauntered over to the counter and tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned around, he said to her, loud and clear, in his best Wolfman Jack voice: “Excuse me, madam, but the shoes are on the first floor. This is the jewelry department.”
Larry’s at his best when he just, suddenly, becomes a character without tipping his hand. One time, I remember, he pulled his jacket collar up and kinda shuffled over to this woman who was idly painting her nails in an automobile dealership waiting room while a technician was inspecting her vehicle.
 “Ah, excuse me, miss,” he said in his sorta raspy Peter Falk Columbo impersonation, “I hate to bother you at a time like this, but I couldn't help but observe that you were doing a little paint job there on your fingernails, and I was wondering if this was something that you usually did every time you went to get your car inspected, or at the doctor’s office or in a restaurant, maybe or if you ever did it while you were in the car, maybe waiting for a red light to change.
“It’s perfectly natural, for you to engage in such womanly activities, and all that, but it just struck me as kinda funny that you were painting your nails blue instead of red. Now, I don’t mean to pry or sound rude or embarrass you, miss, but would you mind telling me if there was some reason why you are doing this? I mean, it just seems to me that this is a very unusual situation here that doesn’t normally happen every day. But then anybody can see that you are a very unusual person. Now, I was wondering…”
 Generally, when Larry walks into somebody’s office and spots a pretty young thing by the water cooler or sipping coffee, he’ll throw caution to the wind and crack everybody up with his wacky Cary Grant “Judy…Judy…Judy” routine. Or he might casually walk over to the bar in a restaurant or nightclub, pick up the telephone and pretend he’s having a conversation, then do a little Humphrey Bogart impersonation. Like: “Of all the gin joints in this town, she had to call here.” Or maybe a twist on that line from the movies, “Here’s listening to you kid.”
  Since Arnold Schwarzenegger became a political personality, Larry’s “Terminator” impersonation skit has been a favorite at cocktail parties or happy hour sessions. Sometimes he does his Ronald Reagan voice or maybe Jimmy Carter when he wants to ask somebody for directions, or verify with a waitress the price of his dinner.
One time, when a waitress handed him the bill, and he wanted to get a rise out of her, he began stammering “Now, lookee here,” like Walter Brennan, while looking for his eyeglasses in his inside coat pocket. Or, on another social occasion, he had all the guests in stitches doing his “Yo…” Sylvester Stallone “Rocky” routine.
 Not to mention his memorable Bill Clinton “I did not have sex with that woman” confession. No matter what the occasion, Larry has a knack for saying the right thing at the wrong time or the wrong thing at the right time that makes people laugh and enjoy themselves.
There are, of course, some Hollywood celebrities who are voice impersonation naturals like Wayne, Bogie and Dangerfield. James Cagney is another, but just about every “voice actor” (as Larry likes to be called), does Jimmy. Or James Stewart. Or Walter Cronkite. (Though maybe not as well as L.T.).
I’ve heard some good Marlon Brando impersonations, from different voice guys, but most of them are pretty horrible. They stick a hanky or a napkin in their mouth and mumble a few words that nobody really understands, and they’ve done the “method acting version” of Brando. Larry’s presentation is much more definitive, and always a favorite with movie fans who are devotees of “The Godfather.”
 Larry also takes “The Godfather” stuff to another dimension, when he branches out from Marlon to Al Pacino, then to Robert Duval and even a little James Caan. You could close your eyes sitting in a booth at a restaurant and swear the whole mob scene was unfolding right before your very ears.
Some of Larry’s best stuff comes from cartoon characters. He does a little of the Mel Blanc stuff for “I thought I saw a putty cat” or maybe a takeoff on the Tasmanian Devil. One of my favorites is Foghorn Leghorn.
 In my opinion, the best character voice Larry does is Reeves the Butler, and it’s probably one of the most requested by clients for their telephone answering tapes. Wolfman Jack is another popular personality voice, remindful of those days when he was doing “The Midnight Special” or broadcasting over XERF radio in Del Rio, Texas, selling roach clips and genuine table cloths from the Last Supper.
 Larry first started doing his celebrity voice impersonations about 25 years ago. Rich Little, recognized as one of the top voice impersonators in the world, who had earned quite a following for his voice work in night clubs and on television, put out a series of celebrity impressions on audio cassette called Phonies.
A few years later, Larry moved to Dallas, Texas and began making the rounds, checking out advertising agencies that might be in the market for someone who did celebrity voice impersonations. He did a few of his best spontaneous off the wall examples for account executives, who suggested he do a demo tape for them to play for potential clients.
Larry’s first client, ironically, was Mother Dubbers, an audio production company that specialized in recording demo tapes and mass producing them for the marketplace. Execs at Mother Dubbers were aware of Rich Little’s cassettes, so when Larry began doing some of his celebrity impersonations in their studio, they immediately suggested he do his own tape and not only market it as a sales tool for voice work at agencies and radio stations, but also for use as an answering machine tape.
Larry thought about the idea for several days and came up with a name for his telephone tape presentation – Famous Ringers. But he still had to decide which celebrities he wanted to impersonate as well as several of the novelty voices he had received favorable comments about from earlier sample tapes he had dubbed and sent out to agencies – like Reeves the Butler and the Old Prospector and several cartoon characters.
Growing up as a kid in Wyoming, Larry had always liked cowboy movies or films about the old west, and admired John Wayne. When he was a program director of a radio station in Casper, Larry met Wayne when the actor made the movie “Hellfighters.”
Larry and a few of his cronies were invited to play cards with Wayne and Bruce Cabot, and Turner had the rare opportunity to study Wayne’s voice style “up close and personal” as they say in hip media circles.
During the course of his daily routine at the station, Larry was kidded by officemates about playing cards with Wayne, and began answering their questions like the Duke. Somehow word leaked out that Turner had become pretty good at imitating Wayne, and Big John himself eventually found out about it.
It was only a matter of time before Turner and a coupla of his buddies got together with Wayne and the movie people for another card game, during which time, John told Larry he had heard that he did a pretty good John Wayne impersonation, and asked Turner to give him a demonstration.
I guess after you’ve been brave enough to draw cards in a poker game with Wayne, nothing phases you much, because when one of Wayne’s fellow actors spoke some lines right out of the movie script, Larry spoke up right on cue without missing a beat.
“Hey, Pilgrim, that’s pretty good,” bellowed Wayne, taking a swig from a bottle of beer. “Lay some more of that stuff on me. But don’t let John Ford know you can do me that good. Hell, I might be out of a job.”
 Then he immediately asked Turner if he could do his buddy Walter Brennan. Larry, of course, had anticipated this, and, since Brennan had been one of his stable characters from the old days of doing celebrity voice impersonations on the air in radio commercials, he had wasted no time in polishing the sound of the veteran actor’s voice.
When Wayne heard Turner doing Brennan for the first time, he laughed so loud he almost fell out of his chair. Bolstered by the fact that John had liked the sound of Larry Turner doing John Wayne, Larry immediately went back to the radio station and began writing some John Wayne sketches and taped a few of these on some demo tapes, plus added an impersonation of Paul Harvey, a staple in the radio station’s news broadcasts all over the country.
He played it for a guy who had told him emphatically, before, that he would never buy radio advertising, and immediately got a whole different reaction. Not only did he buy some airtime at Larry’s station, he hired Larry to do the celebrity impersonation voice work in a series of spots “featuring” John Wayne, Walter Brennan, Paul Harvey and other personalities.
Larry’s celebrity impersonations on the radio became such a hit, he won the Commercial of the Year Award at the annual Broadcasters Award Banquet.
After locating in Texas, Larry expanded his celebrity voices and characters for his Famous Ringers answering machine tape to 30 different personalities. He later also began doing special “personalized impersonations” (for a larger fee) for some of his regular customers.
Somewhere about that time, I dropped in at Mother Dubbers to pick up some tapes of a children’s novelty song (“My Daddy’s Home For Christmas”) I had written, featuring a little boy and several members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. One of the employees at Mother Dubbers told me about Larry’s Famous Ringers and gave me a copy.
After I heard it, I called Larry and set up a meeting. I had seen Rich Little perform at the Fairmont Hotel’s Venetian Room, as well as Frank Gorshin, and, as far as I was concerned, Larrry didn’t have to take a back seat to anybody.
For awhile there, Larry was kidded a lot about being “the poor man’s Rich Little,” but there certainly wasn’t anything poor about it. In no time at all, the money began rolling in from mail order advertisements all over the country. And, what had started out as a simple little demo tape had suddenly exploded into a full-fledged business promotion.
A lot of guys can fool you for a minute or two with a celebrity voice quip, but what made Larry’s sketches so good was the fact that he had written some very clever little scripts for each character that made each one of these priceless. They became collectors items almost overnight.
When I later asked Larry to do a personalized John Wayne answering machine tape for my company, Show Biz America, I was blown away with the results. We did a follow-up with Larry’s hip, humorous Rodney Dangerfield “I Don’t Get No Respect” routine. He was so good as Rodney, friends left messages on my answering machine saying they didn’t know I had moved to Las Vegas. Wow, what a trip!
After we launched the Don Aly’s Celebrity Scene website, Larry did another telephone tape, this time a funny impersonation bit featuring John Wayne and his sidekick, Walter Brennan talking about my column.
Larry’s John Wayne character was trying to tell his Walter Brennan character about the Duke being featured on my home page, but the Brennan character kept interrupting with all sorts of “gol-darn-its” and “Jiminy Cricket” and before you know it, Larry’s Wayne character got so carried away laughing that he couldn’t remember his lines. It reminded me of one of those scenes the Duke had with Walter in the movie “Rio Bravo,” when I had first met Wayne on the set in Tucson, Arizona. (If you check out our website column archives, you’ll find a column about Wayne and “Rio Bravo”).
I’ve often bugged Larry about doing some new personalities for his Famous Ringers telephone tapes. The problem is, today’s actors, as a rule, do not have the distinctive type voices most of the recognizable guys did back when Wayne and his movie co-harts were making history.
Sean Connery is a good example of an actor who is readily recognized today, primarily because of his James Bond exposure. Paul Lynne, the late TV funnyman, is another guy who gets parodied a lot by new voice imitators trying to sound like Larry Turner.
Jack Nicholson or James Earl Jones probably has the most distinctive voice of any film actor today since maybe James Stewart, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda or Bela Lugosi.
 There are a few voice impersonation “new guys on the block” like Dana Carvey (who scored with both George and George W. Bush), Jim Carrey and Robin Williams, but they are mainly comedy stars who rose from the ranks of comedy clubs to successful roles in television and movies.
Their success and popularity, plus their high-income salaries, let them play around with all sorts of zany characterizations of famous people, dead and alive.
 I don’t think Gorshin’s Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster routine at the O.K. Corral will ever be surpassed by any hot young impressionist from today’s new breed of performers. Nor will anyone ever duplicate Gorshin’s Richard Burton sketch when he knights Lancelot at Camelot.
They tell me Gorshin “became” George Burns on Broadway and that his performance was incredible. And that brings up a good point. One of Gorshin’s great skills is always being able to completely mesmerize you into “seeing the character” he is portraying on stage in his act. His facial mannerisms are just as amazing as his voice characterizations.
And that’s why I think Larry Turner has taken celebrity voice impersonations to another dimension, because he doesn’t have the benefit of the visual impact that guys like Little and Gorshin do. He has to completely tantalize you with his voice, and that, I might add, he does quite well.
But, hey, don’t take my word for it. You can have fun checking out Larry’s voice impersonations for telephone answering tapes elsewhere on the Celebrity Scene website. His Famous Ringers are “humdingers” for the real deal. You won't believe your ears.
Well, that’s show biz, baby.
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