It’s time, finally, for Rich Little to tell his own story

Rich Little realized there is one thread running through all the celebrity impressions he has done for more than 50 years. And that thread is ... Rich Little.

Now 76, Little finally makes his own career the focus of a new showcase in the Laugh Factory club at the Tropicana, set to run through at least Aug. 23.

"I got a lot of people saying, 'I think you should do a show on your career,'" says the Canadian-born impressionist, who has lived in Las Vegas since the early '90s.

He started taking the suggestions seriously after he "realized I had hours and hours and hours of tapes of me performing with the greats. I thought to myself, 'I don't think anybody living has that.'"

Little's problem of late is that the celebrity voices that served him well for so many years — from Jack Benny to Johnny Carson — are now familar only to people who grew up watching those TV and movie stars.

"You have to get the right audience for me," he says. "I play to an older crowd."

He knows it would be unseemly for a man of his age to do impressions of young stars. Not to mention that today's stars aren't as distinctive as Humprey Bogart or James Cagney.

"When they say bring your act more up to date, it's very tough. How do you imitate George Clooney or Ben Affleck or Brad Pitt?"

But this new show could change that. In recent years, you might have seen Little do an impression of John Wayne and asked, "Why?"

Now, "When I do the whole John Wayne bit and then you suddenly see John Wayne talking about me, it's very powerful."

Not everything about the act will change. "I still tell jokes," he says.

"And that's a little bit old-fashioned, except that people still like jokes. They get 'em on the Internet and tell all their friends about it. People still like jokes, but the comics today don't really tell jokes."

Still. There are lots of jokes out there, but only a few people can talk about the Dean Martin TV roasts from the old MGM Grand Hotel (now Bally's).

"I've got a picture of a Dean Martin roast on the wall, and it's just me and Ruth Buzzi and Don Rickles who are still around. Everybody else is gone," he says. "It won't be long before people ask, 'Who are these strange people posing for this picture?'"

And the jokes you pass around on the Internet won't talk about the people who choked when they looked out from the podium to see the likes of Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball looking back at them, waiting to laugh.

"There are some people who got up and just stuttered, they couldn't talk. They were (cut) out of the show. They just wilted up there," he says. "If you've got an actor up there who's never done comedy in his life and he's reading these jokes with no timing, looking at all these greats and dying? That must be humilating, you know?"

And did you know that a whole week of "Hollywood Squares" was taped in one day? And if you study reruns carefully enough, you can probably tell the cast is much happier on the Thursday and Friday episodes, which came after a three-martini lunch break.

"After the dinner break it was a whole different show, because those guys could drink back then," Little confirms. "They're sitting in the square with these plastic cups, which are full of booze."

Paul Lynde would be "propped up in the center square, three sheets to the wind. And he'd still be funny."

And did you know, "Paul Lynde hated my impression of him. Hated it." When they show him reacting to it, "He's laughing his head off, but that clip was taken from another show. He's laughing at somebody else."

So now you see why this format could work. The only challenge is cutting this version of it down to an hour.

"The (clips) have to be short because if you're just showing a lot of video, a lot of stuff on the screen, then you're not really performing. You're just watching yourself," he says.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.