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Pirate Nation
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In this picture of ECU cheerleaders in the 1975 Buccaneer, Bubba Dean Rambo is back row, far left.
His sister, Kathy Rambo, is in the middle of the front row.
Rambo transitions to the small screen
is given name is John, but most people on campus knew him as Bubba Dean Rambo ‘76. He was a theater major from Charlotte, a member of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, and an ECU cheerleader with his older sister, Kathy Rambo ’74.
 He carried the Bubba Dean name, and its folksy image, from Greenville to a career on the Broadway stage, to movies, and lately to television, where you might have seen him in recent episodes of “Two Broke Girls,” “Mike & Molly,” “Glee,” “Raising Hope,” “Scrubs,” and “Bunheads.”
We caught up with Rambo during a phone interview in March from his home in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Karen. They met in 1987 on Dolly Parton’s variety show, “Dolly,” which aired on ABC. He was the choreographer, and she was the show’s talent coordinator.
Before this recent run of TV appearances, Bubba Dean worked steadily in movies, with small parts in 15 films. He was the father of the bride in “The Muppet Movie” in 2011, the church elder in “Four Christmases” in 2009, a college professor in “An American Carol” in 2008, a businessman in “13 Going on 30” in 2005, and a dance host in the memorable “Out to Sea” in 1997, with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.
We ask: What’s the biggest difference between acting in movies and on TV?
“Things seem to go quicker on television than in films,” he says. “Time is money with television; once they get the shot set up, they go pretty quickly. In film, there’s generally a bigger budget. They are painstaking at getting the shots set up with the right lighting, which means there is a lot of waiting around, which always leads actors to the food.
“The food is always better on big budget films,” Rambo continues. “In television, there’s always a table with a lot of snacks, and later a lunch or dinner, not bad. In films, the spread always seems to be more involved. On the set of a Disney film I did a few years back, they served us coconut shrimp on silver platters while we were between shots.”
He laughs, and then gets serious about acting and the time he spent at ECU. “I was a classmate of Howell Binkley ’76 and Connie Ray ’76. We all studied under Mavis Ray and Edgar Loessin. They prepared us for the professional entertainment world. We were very fortunate to have had that time with them.”
He mentions that Ray is currently on Broadway in the cast of “Hands on a Hardbody.”
After college, Rambo went to Nashville and worked with Parton, who he says has remained a lifelong friend. It was Parton who brought him to California to work on her ABC show in 1987. Rambo says that’s where he met two other ECU graduates who also were working on the show, music editor Bruce Frazier ’70, and music supervisor, Velton Ray Bunch ’70, who later won an Emmy. Frazier now is a music professor at Western Carolina University.
From there it was on to New York, where Rambo made his Broadway debut with Carol Channing in “Hello Dolly” in 1978. He also appeared in the Broadway productions of “Cats” (1983), “The Magic Show” (1979), and “Woman of the Year” (1982) with Lauren Bacall, Raquel Welch and Debbie Reynolds taking turns in the title role.
Later he sang and danced in the national tours of such lavish musicals as “Sophisticated Ladies,” “They’re Playing Our Song,” and “Sugar Babies.”
He was in the 1987 national tour of “Sugar Babies” with Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller. “We were out on the road, in Des Moines, I think, and in the middle of the show one night, the lights went out. I mean it was pitch black. The audience was getting a little nervous sitting there in the dark, so Mickey grabbed a flashlight, walked on stage with it under his chin to light his face. He sat down at the piano, laughed and joked and played for about a half hour or so, until the lights came back on. He saved the day.”
We asked about his sister. He says Kathy is married, works for Delta Airlines in the Atlanta area and has a daughter who is an ECU graduate, Kasey Jones ’13. His younger sister, Jo Beth Rambo ‘82, also graduated from ECU.
He says he hasn’t been back to campus since moving to the West Coast, but recently connected with some fraternity brothers, including Bob Brewster ’76, through Facebook.
“I have a lot great memories of my time in Greenville,” Rambo says. “It was a special time, those college years, something I think we all realize as we get older, and I am so grateful for the experience.“ -- Steve Tuttle
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