Rob Bartlett
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Bartlett (born May 18, 1957 in Brooklyn, New York) is a comedian, actor and writer who gained wide-spread fame as an comedian on the radio and television show Imus in the Morning. His most famous characters include: Dr. Phil McGraw, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Clinton, and Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys).
Not all of his characters consist of celebrity caricatures. One long-running recurring character is named Blind Mississippi White Boy Pig Feets Dupree, an old blues musician from Louisiana. "Feets" employs a harmonica to accompany his vocals on the "Imus" show. He often takes credit for writing songs or for having instituted, decades ago, innovations in American popular music that have been widely attributed in most music histories to African-American rhythm & blues, jazz and blues musicians. His apocryphal biography includes his part of the defunct blues band, "Dumbass Johnson and the Shortbus 5."
Rob writes all the material he performs on the Imus show, as well as the lyrics to all of the song parodies the show has become famous for over the years. The lyrics often comment on current news items or societal phenomena. For example, the Bartlett character "Rush Limbaugh" sometimes expresses his commentary in song. An example from the years of the Clinton Administration was the "Limbaugh" criticism of the alleged ultra-feminist or unfeminine tendencies of First Lady Hillary Clinton in "The First Lady is a Tramp", a parody of Frank Sinatra's version of "The Lady is a Tramp". Somewhat later came another example of a "Limbaugh" song, a holiday parody of the Burl Ives version of "A Holly Jolly Christmas". "A Robert Downey Christmas" was about seasonal and celebrity drug use and dysfunction.
Bartlett has been appearing on the "Imus" show, beginning on New York's WFAN-AM (660) radio, since the late 1980's. His earlier characters included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Manuel Antonio Noriega, and fictional Japanese comedian "Buddy" Miyagi.
His "Schwarzenegger" character criticized Bruce Willis and Demi Moore for having "too many babies", stating that they were not acting as "beautiful" and "fantastic" Hollywood stars, and rather as though they were people "from the Ozark Mountains".
Bartlett continues to be in demand for his stand up comedy. He makes annual appearances in venues throughout the Northeastern United States.
Bartlett also performs on Broadway, on television, films and commercials. His comic essays can be found on his website: robshow.com
[edit] Trivia
- Bartlett has done stand-up on "Late Night with David Letterman," and "MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour."
- He has written a Broadway play: "More to Love--A Big Fat Comedy"
- One of his more famous impressions is that of Brian Wilson, the original song-writer and lead singer for the Beach Boys, who is famous for having had a nervous breakdown. [1]
- Aside from comedy, Bartlett has been in five movies, including Spin the Bottle and The Sex O'Clock News.
- He was one of the original color analysts on WWF Monday Night RAW in 1993.
- He has been in more than five episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
- He received a Drama Desk Award for his performance as 'Marcus' in the Off Broadway play 'Tabletop'
- He has appeared on Broadway, in Chicago: The Musical, as Amos Hart, in "Little Shop of Horrors" as 'Mr. Mushnik', in 'Sweet Charity' as 'Herman', and as "Speed" in The Odd Couple with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane.
