Weird News: The Wolf Files

Jan. 11, 2001 — -- How big a shadow can you cast when you stand 3 feet, 9 inches tall? A giant one, in the case of Billy Barty.

Barty was a comedian to the very end. He could dress up like a pint-sized Liberace, in a silver wig and satin pants, and play a toy piano as shaving cream bubbled from a candelabra. It was an act that brought down the house.

And his gag at Jimmy Stewart’s 1946 bachelor party, when he surprised Stewart in a diaper and called him “Daddy,” is Hollywood legend.

Barty, who was 76 when he died two days before Christmas, was America’s most recognizable little person, a dwarf, magic elf — and sometimes a guy who just happened to be short — in more than 40 films and countless TV appearances.

But more important, Barty changed America. He’s a national hero to dwarfs, forever changing the lives of little people.

Mickey Rooney Honors a Friend

“He was one of the funniest guys I ever worked with, a great friend,” Mickey Rooney told The Wolf Files, speaking from his home in Los Angeles less than three weeks after he underwent multiple bypass heart surgery to treat a blocked artery.

“I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without Billy. He was one of a kind.”

Rooney had only been home from the hospital two days when he paid last respects to Barty at a memorial service Dec. 28 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Los Angeles. Comic Red Buttons and Barty’s 6-foot-tall son Braden delivered the eulogy.