He’s the man with 1,000 faces
Jacqui Brown
If you’re looking for a few laughs and a little political satire to
break up the week, check out the Casting Call Lounge at the Burbank
Holiday Inn.
Highly acclaimed comedian John Roarke, known as the man of a
thousand faces, is strutting his hilarious impressions of George
Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and other well-known political
figures and television celebrities beginning at 8 p.m. every Tuesday
and Wednesday.
As for which is Roarke’s favorite -- well, President George Bush,
of course.
“I used to do him very straight, but now I’ve made him into a
cartoon character,” Roarke said. “I just juice him up, and it’s like
Bush on steroids.”
Comedian Jerry Duncan from Imagine Peace Productions in Woodland
Hills, who is working on a comedy film in Burbank, dropped in to see
Roarke’s show this week and was impressed by his fearless portrayal
of government figures.
“What I like about him is that he’s doing current stuff, and he’s
not afraid to make fun of the administration,” Duncan said. “He’s
very daring. I think that’s needed because people want to laugh.”
Tony Velone, who was tagging along with Duncan, said it’s nice to
take the pressure off in a chaotic world and look at it from another
perspective.
“What’s going on in the real world is so sad and serious that what
John does is give you a way to laugh about it, because you’ve got to
laugh about it,” Velone said. “It gives me hope, because if someone
can get up there and stick it to all of them and we can laugh about
it for a few minutes, it makes me think we’ll get by.”
Growing up in Rhode Island, Roarke said he was a bit of a
prankster throughout his youth, but it was in high school that this
self-professed shy boy’s need to step into the limelight began. His
imitations drew attention both good and bad but allowed him to hone
his comedic chops even though, at that time, it was just to amuse
those around him.
“I used to imitate all my teachers,” Roarke said. “I went to a
very strict, all-male Catholic high school, but I was so shy and
likable, I always got away with it.”
During that time, when someone came to summon him to the
chaplain’s office, the teachers would smuggle him into their classes
so he could share his impressions, he said.
“It was like an underground railroad of teachers that were cool in
high school, and so that’s what I did,” he said.
Becoming a priest was a calling that would turn out to be the
wrong calling for this quick-witted, speed-of-light prankster. After
a series of nonstop jokes and pranks, he was eventually asked to
leave the seminary.
“It was all pranks there,” Roarke said. “I was like the Hawkeye
Pierce of the seminary, and after two years, they decided I should go
another way.”
In 1976, he began his professional career working in a small
comedy group in Boston, where there were really no working comedy
clubs, but that did not deter him.
“Nobody was famous in the group,” Roarke said. “We were all just
comics and comedy writers working where there were no comedy clubs.
Then one of the comedians got hot and was hired on the ‘Donny and
Marie’ television show back in the early 1980s, went on to a show
called ‘Fridays’ on ABC, and he called me because they needed an
impressionist.”
After 2 1/2 years of that, Roarke went on to appear on several
major shows, including “D.C. Follies,” “Off The Wall,” “The Fresh
Prince of Bel-Air,” “The Phil Donahue Show” and “The Tonight Show
with Jay Leno.” He also appeared in films such as “Naked Gun 2 1/2 ,”
where he played President Bush Sr., “Mutant on the Bounty” and
“Silence of the Hams.”
In the 1990s, Roarke began his corporate entertainment career. His
tasteful, humorous presentations of company objectives have become a
sought-after commodity across the nation and include clients like
Pepsi-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Bayer Corp. and 3-M Products, to name a
few on his long list.
Producer Meredith Hampton of Perspective Communications Group in
Middletown, R.I., said Roarke works with their company several times
a year.
Their company produces corporate shows for companies like G-Tech
Corp., Textron Corp. and dozens of other major companies.
“What you get with John Roarke is an uncanny ability to really
utilize humor in a corporate setting,” Hampton said. “He’s always
appropriate but still manages to shake things up.”
Hampton said he’s one of the finest impersonators she’s seen and
has a huge laundry list of characters. Her own favorite -- David
Letterman
“He gets up there, puts on a costume, and he’s right on the
money,” she said. “The gestures, the voices, they’re all so right on
-- he’s got a lot of energy.”
Aside from traveling the country doing his corporate gigs, Roarke
is working on a one-man show based on several impressions.
“All my characters are current, but this one is a nostalgia show,”
Roarke said.
“I do a lot of great older characters, but there are 75 million
baby boomers right now, so this will be a nostalgia show for those
boomers -- a retrospective of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s -- their
formative years.”