Billy Barty

He was the conductor of the Hollywood Baby Orchestra in late 1930 at age six. Newspapers around that time shaved what few years they could off his age, claiming he was 2, 3 or 5.

And even this wasn’t the start of Billy Barty’s show-biz career.

A year earlier Gladys Long, Hollywood correspondent of the Toronto Star Weekly, reviewed his appearance in the two-reel talkie Bow-Wow: “[W]hile we’re not terribly fond of these precocious youngsters out here, we’ve got to admit that this child has talent.” (Side note to animation fans: also in the cast was Pinto Colvig).

Barty’s talent took him a long way in entertainment, though he took some time off. The Los Angeles Daily News profiled him on June 15, 1931.

Billy Barty Is Quaint Child
He Wants to Fly
He Gets Tired of Kisses
By ELEANOR BARNES
HE gets kissed too much to suit him.
He's 32 inches tall.
He's 28 pounds heavy.
And for every inch of height, and every pound of weight, little Billy Barty is animation.
If you saw "Daddy Long Legs" at Carthay Circle, or have seen any of Larry Darmour-Mickey McQuire comedies, you will recall Billy Barty.
He's the tiniest rascal in talkies and he steals every picture in which he plays.
Billy had just returned home from a bathing show contest at Ocean Park yesterday, and was quite proud of his Lord Fontleroy suit, black velvet jacket and white satin blouse. This, Billy says, is the official costume when he directs a child's orchestra.
"I've made 17 public performances in a month," said Billy, as he squirmed on my lap and played with a glass bracelet I had on my left arm.
"I like to appear on the stage to help the men who need work."
Then, taking a pencil and paper, Billy's interest was diverted to writing his own name on a scratch pad, for with help, he can spell it out in full.
AGE MYSTERY
How old is Billy?
He is a little older than one would suspect from seeing him in a cradle in "Daddy Long Legs." In fact, he is shorter than the average 2-year-old, and 10 inches shorter than he should be for his age, which is professionally placed at 3 ½ years.
Billy is precocious. He's smarter than the average child of 8, as he plays trap drums, he can tap dance, he's not camera-shy or bashful, nor has he been spoiled by the attention he gets.
HIS AMBITIONS
A sensitive, shy baby, who claims a great deal to hide his feelings, little Billy Barty is called at home "Lone Eagle," for he never plays with other children. He's fond of Dolores, aged 4 ½ years, his sister, who is a head taller than he is and he adores Evelyn, the 11-year-old Barty girl, who plays the piano like a professional.
"I'm going to be an aviator when I grow up," said Billy who thinks Amelia Earhart's autogyro a great invention. He's going to have one of those, too.
He also wants to be a football player and thinks wedding cakes are the bunk to dream on. Saturday morning Billy was ring-bearer for Betty Norton Burch and John R. Murphy, who were married at Christ the King church.
HATES KISSES
"I get very tired of being kissed," said Billy, "but I've got a girl. She is Betty Jane Graham and she is the best actress in the world." She is 10.
He is the most lovable film child the writer ever met.
And who is Billy's favorite actor?
"It is myself," he said naively.
The wee one has won innumerable prizes for mental tests, in popularity contests and this week is to be presented with the smallest accordian made--if he will learn to play it.
"Sure, I'll learn how," said. Billy "And I'll sing 'Barnacle Bill the Sailor' at the same time."

Let’s take a 50-year leap. Barty is as busy as ever, not only in entertainment but engaging in some necessary activism. This is from the Hamilton Spectator, July 27, 1981.

Billy Barty Believes in Little People
By KATHLEEN WERNICK
TORONTO—Billy Barty asks the first question. It's about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
"We get Canadian football in California. I like it. I'm a sports fan anyway—I'd watch checker games."
Later on, he mentions that, in his younger days, he played football and basketball at Los Angeles City College. But, by that time, nothing surprises about this charming, humorous man who has packed such a large life into his small frame.
Billy Barty is 3 feet 9 inches tall. He has been "in the business”, as he calls it, since he joined his family in vaudeville at the age of three.
His biography says his first movie was Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1933, but Barty corrects that. "Actually, I was making two-reelers in 1928.”
Now, he has finished a movie that he thinks "is going to change my whole motion picture career." He chuckles as he says it, for he has just used exactly the same words about "The Day of the Locust”, in which his dramatic role as the dwarf brought him special acclaim six years ago.
The new movie is Under the Rainbow, which opens in Hamilton this week and stars Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher. It's billed as a madcap comedy and, on a publicity tour in Toronto, Billy Barty seems still to be caught up in its spirit.
"I play Otto Kriegling, sent on a mission by Hitler" he says in a heavy German accent. "I'm a bad guy."
"Listen, it was fun," he continues. "It gave me chance to speak out and to speak up, and act mean and nasty. It's not type-casting, you know.”
Billy Barty knows all about type-casting.
"It used to be that you'd see a little person," he explains, everybody would say 'Oh, is there a circus in town?’. ‘Don’t you work in a circus?’”
"Through the organization, the Little People of America, we have changed that image a lot. Only one per cent of the whole organization is in show business, and the others hold regular jobs.”
Barty founded the Little People of America in 1956 and says his motivation was "to get little people together so that they could communicate and find common needs—like medical, vocational, social and educational needs."
"We have developed so many things through the organization. We have books written about how to lower the closets, turn on a light switch, get a drink of water, find work, drive an automobile, make a telephone call.”
"We really try to be a positive-thinking organization, and we try to tell the little people that it's a two-way street. In other words, don't stand on the corner and wait for a hand-out. That's being very blunt, but it's being very honest."
Barty thinks that Under the Rainbow is going to change the image of little people further. There are 150 of them in the movie, which is set in the Culver Hotel in Culver City, California, in 1938.
That was the year The Wizard of Oz was made, and legends live on about the high jinks that the little people who played the Munchkins got up to while staying at the Culver.
Barty says the legends are about 75 per cent true. Things are different now for the actors who play the actors who played the Munchkins.
With week-long national conventions of the Little People of America being held annually since 1956, the exhilaration of being together, of being in a majority for once, is nothing new. There were 650 at last year's convention.
Through the Billy Barty Foundation, Barty helped cast the movie, introducing hundreds of little people to the producers.
"They had a great time doing it,” he says "It's going to show that little people can be entertaining. This is not a circus thing. This is not a side show. It just depicts little people as human beings in all different walks of life."

Back in 1942, Barty and his family "quit the business altogether.” He and his father and two sisters had toured in vaudeville through the U.S. and Canada, and Billy himself had played Rooney's kid brother in more than 75 Mickey Maguire comedies.
When they quit, Billy finished high school, majored in journalism at Los Angeles City College, and then became public-relations director of athletics for the college.
"But eventually, show business started to get back in my blood again," he says. "By 1950, I was back in full swing.”
That meant being part of Spike Jones' zany group for eight years, many network children's television shows, including Puff 'n' Stuff, Sigmund and the Sea Monster, and Billy Barty's Big Show, and more recent television credits in The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Little House on the Prairie and Chips.
Since Gold Diggers of 1933, he has appeared in more than 130 films, including W.C. Fields and Me, Foul Play, and Firepower.
"I just keep plugging away," he says, as he gets ready for the next city on the publicity tour. He has two television variety shows he's putting like to together, a movie script he'd do, and another he's writing, "if I ever get the time to work on it."
He has a golf tournament coming up, the ninth annual Little People's Invitational Tournament in California. And this week, he'll be meeting up with his wife and two children at a Little People of America convention in Minneapolis.
"Then it's off again," he says, "to continue the tour for Under the Rainbow. I hope the movie plants in the minds of the powers-that-be that little people can be, and are, entertaining.”

The first time I remember seeing him was on Laugh-In in 1968. Later, he appeared on Redd Foxx’s variety show. He was terrific on Spike Jones’ show in the ‘50s. You may have your own favourite Barty moments. I’m sure there are plenty to pick from.