Victor & Billy
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 1/19/01
Comics Buyer's Guide
Saturday, December 23, 2000…
'Tis the season to be jolly but Leonard Maltin and I just depressed each other on the phone. I told him that Victor Borge had passed away and he told me that Billy Barty had died.
Mr. Borge was either a very funny pianist or a very musical comedian. I never met the man but about once a decade, commencing when I was around ten, I managed to see him perform in concert. The first time was at the Greek Theatre, here in Los Angeles, where his opening act was the eminent ventriloquist, Señor Wences. Between their two accents, I couldn't understand one word all evening but I was pretty sure they were funny.
The last time I saw Borge was about five years ago, and he performed what I suspect was the exact same act, right down to the bit about musical punctuation marks. The only thing he changed over the years was the part where he hit a loud chord, startling himself so much that he fell off the piano bench.
With great dignity, taking his own sweet time about it, he would get up and dust himself off. Then he'd open the piano bench, pull out the ends of a seat belt, close the bench, sit down, buckle himself in and launch into Rachmaninoff.
He dropped that bit about the time he turned 70. He did the rest of the act all around the world for the next 21 years.
The last few times I saw him, I could understand most of what he said. It turned out I was right. He was very funny.
Billy Barty was a star even before he was short.
He made his film debut somewhere around 1930, when he was six years old and roughly the right height for his age. He continued playing children for a long time, even after reaching his maximum span of 3-feet, 10 inches. Later, he became a frequent actor in movies and a guest star on a staggering number of TV programs. For a time, he even had a kids' show on Los Angeles TV. On it, he hosted Three Stooges shorts and played games with a live audience of 11-year-olds, most of whom towered over him.
People called him a midget but that wasn't so. He was a dwarf. If you want to get technical, he had what is called Cartilage Hair Syndrome Hypoplasia.
That difference mattered a lot to Billy, especially when he became famous from his TV appearances. He heard from a lot of others with similar conditions, some of whom were bothered that he allowed the press to call him a midget. The word "dwarf" had come to have a negative connotation — thank you, Mr. Disney — and Billy began to crusade against the stereotypes and certain physical problems
In 1975, he founded a non-profit organization — the Billy Barty Foundation — that did a lot to lessen the stigmas. I just copied the following from its website…
Most of us with dwarfism prefer to be described as "Little People"' And please, put the emphasis on the word 'People.' We did not spring from the pages of a storybook or emerge from an enchanted forest. We are not magical beings and we are not monsters. We are parents and sons and daughters. We are doctors and lawyers and realtors and teachers. We dream, cry, laugh, shout, fall in love, and make mistakes. We are no different from you.
Dwarfism is a condition that affects over 1.5 million people in the U.S. alone, and there are over 100 different types of dwarfism. Most Little People are born to families with no history of dwarfism. Even today, in the most open-minded and prejudice-intolerant society ever in recorded human history, people with dwarfism are still subjected to degrading stereotypes, societal barriers, and attitudinal barriers.We endure everything from job discrimination and reduced social opportunities to physical abuse and open public ridicule on a daily basis.
Billy was absolutely dedicated to the cause…which is not to say he did not have a wonderful sense of humor about his physical succinctness. It was, after all, the thing that made him famous. He also had a wicked appreciation of its occasional perks — like the fact that much of the world had to come down to meet him on his level.
I was the head writer on a number of shows produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, and he was part of their stock company, cast in most everything they did. I'm 6'3" and often, when I had to confer with Billy on some script point, I'd stoop or get down on one knee.
We'd finish our discussion and he'd start to walk away. Then he'd turn around, look at me still crouching in position and grin, "I'm leaving now. You can get up."
One time, we went to lunch together. Billy had all sorts of medical woes that made it difficult for him to walk and, since my parking space was on the other side of the lot, I said, "You wait here…I'll go get my car."
"Don't bother," he said. He led me to his parking spot in a handicapped space, right outside where we were taping and announced, "I'll drive."
It was a big car — a Lincoln, I think, bigger than any car I've ever owned. The front seat had been modified to bring it extra-close to the dashboard, and the gas pedal and brake had extensions. Billy hopped effortlessly and comfortably onto a special, elevated cushion behind the wheel. I had no such ease trying to squeeze into the passenger spot.
"You might be more comfy in the back," Billy chuckled after watching me play Twister for about two minutes.
He was right. I was. And I recall hoping that someone I knew would see me, being chauffeured around Hollywood by Billy Barty. I wanted to say to them, "That's nothing. I have four of the surviving Munchkins trimming my hedges!"
One of the programs we did was a short-lived thing called the Krofft Superstar Hour, which was comprised of multiple segments. We did thirteen of them in "block scheduling," meaning that we taped thirteen openings, then thirteen closings, then thirteen episodes of a department called "Horror Hotel," then thirteen episodes of "Lost Island," and so on. Later, when we had thirteen of everything, it would all be mix-and-matched into thirteen hour-long shows.
Billy was signed for the run of the series. He appeared in both "Horror Hotel" and "Lost Island," though you'd never have known he was in the former.
The Kroffts, as everyone knows, specialized in strange costumed creatures and "Horror Hotel" was full of them. The role Billy was assigned was that of Seymour the Spider, which involved a bulky, fur-covered costume that completely covered him. The character's voice was supplied by a wonderful actor named Walker Edmiston, situated at a nearby microphone.
You couldn't see or hear Billy when he played Seymour. There was no way anyone watching could have had any idea who was in the spider suit, but for the obvious fact that, whoever it was, he or she was pretty short.
We began rehearsing and the first time I watched Billy running madly around as Seymour, a little alarm bell went off in my noggin. Just being inside that get-up under hot lights was clearly an ordeal. Every break, when they took the head piece off, he was drenched in perspiration, gasping for air…and he was not a young man.
Worse, the role was very strenuous, involving a lot of chase sequences. Often, it meant scurrying up and down stairs, and Billy had trouble walking, even out of costume. He was also having trouble seeing out of the eyeholes.
I decided this wouldn't do and spent the rest of the afternoon chopping down Seymour's participation, assigning many of his lines and actions to others. This would not affect Billy's paycheck in any way. It just meant fewer hours in the spider suit and less running, which I assumed would please him. It would conserve his strength for "Lost Island," in which he would appear without an identity-hiding costume; where his acting skills were really needed.
The next morning when I walked in, a Production Assistant ran up to me and said, "Thank God you're here! You're needed down on the set. It's Billy Barty!"
"He hurt himself?" I asked. That was my first thought.
"No, he's throwing a tantrum, saying he's going to quit or something. He demands to see you."
I ran down to the set, squatted next to a very irate Mr. Barty and asked, "Billy, what's wrong?"
Furious, he waved the script revisions and yelled, "You cut me out of the show! I've been in show business for almost half a century! Nobody ever chopped my part down like this before!"
I started to quote the old maxim about there being no small roles, only small actors, then thought better of it. What I actually said was, "Billy, we're trying to save your energy…"
"You don't like my work?"
"Billy, we love your work. You're irreplaceable and we need you healthy when we start taping 'Lost Island.' We didn't want you to get hurt — "
"I'm an actor," he said. "I want to act."
I said, "Billy…no one even knows it's you. You're completely covered and Walker does the voice so — "
"I'm an actor," he said again. "I'm being paid to act, just like everyone else here. I want to act."
"Okay," I shrugged. We went back to the old scripts and, for the next two weeks, I watched Billy sweat and bump into things and become exhausted playing Seymour the Spider. And he loved every minute of it, because he was an actor and he was acting.
That was one of two times I saw Billy upset. The other is a story I told here a few years ago, but it's too good not to reiterate.
At the same time we were doing the Krofft shows, Hervé Villechaize was playing Tattoo, the sidekick on Fantasy Island — you know, the diminutive guy with the thick accent who used to yell, "The plane! The plane!"
Years later, I wound up producing a special on which Mr. Villechaize appeared. He was a mean and troubled little man…and I mean "little" in both the physical and spiritual sense. He somehow thought that because he was a TV star, he was entitled to the same treatment as Tom Selleck, and the same access to women. He drove them nuts on our set, grabbing and groping from unanticipated angles, and demanding they zip his fly.
Because of his condition, Hervé had no strength in his hands. He could barely grip anything and certainly could not, he claimed, work his own zipper. Ergo, every time he had a costume change or a toilet break, he would stride up to the most attractive woman around and insist she do the honors. And she would, in turn, complain to the producer, who was me.
I finally had to deputize the Stage Manager. I told him, "From now on, you are not only Stage Manager but also Associate Producer in Charge of Dwarf Trouser Adjustment." Since then, whenever people ask me what a TV producer does, I tell them this story.
Hervé was an enormous pain in many ways, not the least of which was that, in front of the camera, he was pretty lousy. His accent was impenetrable and, instead of rehearsing and learning his lines, he spent his time ordering around male employees and discomforting female ones. The lack of effort was especially galling since he'd been hired in something of a mercy booking.
Since he'd been dismissed from Fantasy Island — for reasons clearly evident — he'd had next-to-no work. This was partly due to an understandable paucity of roles for three-foot-eleven Frenchmen, but it also had something to do with the reputation he'd built within the industry. One of our producers, aware of his medical tribulations and the fact that he was about to lose his Screen Actors Guild health insurance, had insisted we find a spot for him.
We did. You know the saying about "No good deed?" Exactly.
I mention all this to make a point of contrast: Hervé's "stardom," such as it was, was based wholly on him being an oddity. That was why his career didn't last long. It basically consisted of a couple of freak bookings, plus the ancillary momentum from being on Fantasy Island. No one ever hired him because they thought he'd be good on camera. They just thought he'd be short.
Billy Barty was usually hired to be short, but also to be funny. That was why he was always in-demand. There are plenty of dwarves and midgets around. Billy worked steadily for close to seventy years because he was an actor and he loved acting…even loved it enough to run around for weeks in a stifling spider outfit.
But the story I wanted to close with — the one I told before — occurred one day when we were still doing the Krofft Superstar Hour. That week's TV Guide featured a cover story on Hervé that infuriated Billy. He was stalking around our set, muttering unkind comments about Mr. Villechaize. I asked him why.
His irritation, he explained, was because in the interview, Hervé had insisted he was a midget, not a dwarf. Billy said that was a lie — one that distressed him because he was working so hard to remove the negative implications of the word, "dwarf."
As he was explaining this to me, someone else came by and asked Billy what he was riled about. Billy answered them with what may well be the funniest line I've heard uttered in thirty years in and around show business.
He said, "It's Hervé. He's passing for a midget!"
I was squatting when he said it and I fell over and just laughed for around twenty minutes. I'm laughing now, recalling his delivery. He really was a very funny man.
I've been trying to figure out how to end this without some sort of "short" reference — you know, like, "He may have been three-foot-ten, but he was a giant, blah blah blah…" Too easy, too obvious. So I'll just say that Billy Barty was a helluva great guy and a true professional. I'm very glad he had a long, glorious career because he certainly earned it. In a field where so few get what they deserve, it's always nice when someone does.