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.”