Will Jordan, Who Mimicked the Famous, Is Dead at 91

Will Jordan, a gifted impressionist who mimicked the voices of many stars but became known mainly for his full-body imitation of variety-show host Ed Sullivan, died Thursday at his home in New York. He was 91.

Dr. Paula Rauch, his niece, said the cause was complications of a stroke.

Sullivan, whose Sunday show was must-see television for nearly a quarter century, was an awkward, wooden physical presence who mangled words and names. Jordan turned him into a mumbling character who cracked his knuckles, popped his eyes, hunched his shoulders, folded his arms, spun in place and promised the audience it was in for a “really big shoo.”

But it was largely an invention. Sullivan was not inherently funny, so Jordan created a comic version of him. He started by putting his tongue under his upper lip — as if he were imitating an ape — and rolled his eyes so audiences could see the whites. More gestures followed, he told Gerald Nachman, the author of “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s” (2003).

“The reason it went over was because it wasn’t anything like the real Sullivan,” Jordan said. “It was a partial invention. He never said ‘really big,’ he never said ‘shoo,’ he never cracked his knuckles, he never rolled his eyes up, he never did spins, he never frowned.”

Sullivan became Jordan’s breakthrough voice. He had honed it for a couple of years before he performed it in 1953 on the stage of “The Toast of the Town,” Sullivan’s variety shoo, which ran from 1948 to 1971. (The name was changed after a few years to “The Ed Sullivan Show.”)

After his second appearance, in 1954, when he added many of the mannerisms that would make the impression famous, Sid Shalit, a radio and TV columnist for the Daily News in New York, wrote that “Jordan captured every nuance, every inflection, every shoulder-shrug, every near-burp.”

Jordan imitated Sullivan in the Broadway musical “Bye Bye Birdie” (but not in the film version, in which Sullivan imitated himself), as well as in movies like “The Buddy Holly Story” (1978) and “The Doors” (1991) and in the video for Billy Joel’s 1983 song “Tell Her About It.” He also recorded a version of “Bye Bye Love,” the Everly Brothers hit, in Sullivan’s voice in 1959.

His great success at mimicking Sullivan led to imitations of his imitation, about which Jordan was extremely protective.

“The people that stole from me didn’t need to,” he told comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff in an interview for the website Classic Television Showbiz in 2011, referring to other comedians who did Sullivan impressions. “Jackie Mason. Why would he need to steal from me? Jack Carter? Why would he steal from me?”

Nachman wrote that Jordan was crushed that “a legion of imitators” had appropriated his Sullivan impression. Rauch, his niece, said in a telephone interview that he had also been upset that other comedians, among them Lenny Bruce, had stolen other material from him, or so he maintained.

William Rauch (his given name is often wrongly given as Wilbur) was born in the Bronx on July 27, 1927, and grew up in Queens. His father, Theodore, was a pharmacist who also ran the candy concession at a local movie theater. His mother, Claire (Kahan) Rauch, owned a hat store.

Billy, as his family called him, was more of a jokester than a student and notably adept at playing with a yo-yo. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, performed in summer stock (but did not enjoy acting) and began working in the late 1940s as a stand-up comedian with a talent for doing impressions.

With his gift for imitating Sullivan and others, among them Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx and Jack Benny, Jordan became — along with David Frye, Rich Little, Frank Gorshin, John Byner, Marilyn Michaels and George Kirby — one of an elite group of impressionists who performed regularly on television in the postwar decades.

With the end of “The Ed Sullivan Show” the demand for seeing Jordan mold his body and voice to imitate its host began to wane.

For years after Sullivan’s death in 1974, Jordan annually placed an ad in showbiz trade magazines that read, “It’s just not the same without you.”

In the 1970s and ‘80s Jordan took a detour, imitating George C. Scott’s Academy Award-winning performance as Gen. George S. Patton for corporate sales conferences and motivational retreats.

“He had this full Patton outfit, a collection of World War II medals and a helmet, and he always did his own makeup,” Rauch said.

Jordan appeared in Woody Allen’s “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984) as himself, one of a chorus of comics reminiscing at the Carnegie Delicatessen about the small-time talent agent of the title played by Allen.

Jordan is survived by his companion, Rose Lindenmayer, and a son, Lonnie Saunders.

In 2013, long retired from show business, Jordan performed his Sullivan impression at a 100th-anniversary tribute to the Palace Theater at the Players Club in Manhattan.

The tribute was organized by Travis Stewart, who produces vaudeville shows under the name Trav S.D. “It was,” Stewart said in a telephone interview, “like the last echo of Ed Sullivan.”