A Mini-Obit: Actor Billy Barty

Tue., Dec. 26, 2000 10:45 AM PST by Josh Grossberg

Billy Barty, the 3-foot-10 actor famous for playing absurdly comic characters in a career lasting more than seven decades, died Saturday of heart failure. He was 76.

According to his publicist, Barty was admitted to a Glendale, California, hospital November 30 after falling ill with a viral infection stemming from heart problems.

"Billy is somebody who has given his whole life to the film industry and the entertainment industry...and has always been a gigantic, tremendous personality and star to me, and always will be," said long-time friend Mickey Rooney in a statement.

Barty first made his mark in show business in 1927 at age 3, playing Rooney's kid brother in the Mickey McGuire series of comedy shorts, which ran in the late '20s and early '30s. In 1933, Barty got his big break when he landed his first feature film role, a bit part in Alice and Wonderland.

A succession of parts soon followed in radio, television, and Broadway, but it was on the silver screen where Barty achieved his greatest fame later in life, with his trademark one-eyed mischievous smile and gravelly voice.

He's perhaps most fondly remembered for his absurdly comic roles such as the suspected stalker opposite Chevy Chase in Foul Play, the tongue-in-cheek German spy in Under the Rainbow and an agent in Day of the Locust. He also played the part of the wise-old wizard in Willow.

Born Guillermo Guiseppi Bertanzetti in 1924, Munchkinland's favorite son went on to star in his own children's program, Billy Barty's Big Show in Los Angeles in the 1960s. One of Barty's last appearances was on an episode of Frasier.

While short in size, Barty used his stature in the entertainment industry as an activist to help educate people about dwarfism and improve the way "little people" (as he called them) looked at themselves. To that effect, he started his own nonprofit organization, The Little People Foundation, in 1957 followed by the The Billy Barty Foundation in 1975.

"The general public thinks all little people are in circuses or sideshows," Barty said in an interview last year with the Associated Press. "We have doctors, nurses, just about every field covered."

In October, Barty was honored with the Long Beach Film Festival's Humanitarian of the Year Award. He also was active in politics, helping to support the presidential campaign of Governor George W. Bush, as well as having once served on a disabilities commission for former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development chief Jack Kemp.

On the occasion of Barty's death, friends both old and new remembered the little guy who made colossal contributions both in and out of Hollywood. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who had been a friend of Barty's for 37 years, told Los Angeles' KCBS-TV, "He was a giant in the world. He gave hope to young and old alike. He founded the Little People's [Foundation], which provided dignity and recognition and opportunities for people who are small."

Last May, Barty accidentally fell off a motorized scooter and onto concrete stairs, bruising his face and fracturing his eye socket. The actor, who had been using the scooter after undergoing hip surgery last year, characteristically shrugged off the injury, just as he had shrugged off the height differential which defined his life and career.

"The name of my condition is Cartilage Hair Syndrome Hypoplasia, but you can just call me Billy," he said in a statement on the Barty foundation's Website.

Barty is survived by his wife, Shirley, son, Braden, daughter, Lori, and granddaughter, Tina.