AS SEEN ON TV: REMEMBERING DAVID FRYE

David Frye, the impressionist best known for skewering Richard Nixon and LBJ, recently passed away:

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 29, 2011; 10:33 PM

David Frye, who became one of the country's most popular comic satirists with his realistic and caustic impressions of President Richard M. Nixon and other political figures, died Jan. 24 in Las Vegas of cardiopulmonary arrest. He was 76.

After doing impersonations of movie stars, Mr. Frye began to introduce politics to his act in the mid-1960s and his career exploded. His subjects included a drawling President Lyndon B. Johnson, a gravel-voiced Nelson Rockefeller and an excitedly cheerful Hubert H. Humphrey.

But his most memorable character by far was Nixon, whom Mr. Frye portrayed as a tortured soul with darting eyes, flaring brows, scowling lips and deep-seated insecurities. The longer the president stayed in office, the deeper Mr. Frye's impressions drilled into Nixon's psyche.

"My administration has taken crime out of the streets," Mr. Frye's Nixon said in one Watergate-era routine, "and put it in the White House where I can keep an eye on it."

As an "As Seen On TV" - "Hat Squad" tribute to his talents, here's a video of Mr. Frye doing some of his more famous impressions.......

BCnU!