Tiny Tim Wanted a New Megaphone

Joe Cappy, Tiny Tim's new manager, says Tim failed to appear at the Southern California Festival of Flowers because of sciatica. Ron DeBlasio, Tim's brand new ex-manager (he announced his resignation four days after Tim's nonappearance) tells another story.
    DeBlasio's version reveals Tiny Tim as caprecious, to say the least. "One reason he didn't go was spite," says DeBlasio. "By not going he was punishing those who wouldn't give in to him about the new megaphone.
    The megaphone, there's the rub, as DeBlasio tells it, it happened two nights before the flower show, on April 8, after Tim's evening performance at Las Vegas' Fremont Hotel. Mr. Tiny got into an argument with (another) one of his managers, Jeff Wald, about buying a new megaphone.
    DeBlasio say's Tim's under stringent financial control because he uses up money like shopping bags: for example, when Tim charged $1,800 for cosmetics in one day, his lawyers refused to approve it. Wald told Tim he'd have to wait until the old megaphone was fixed. Upon which, says DeBlasio, the famous falsetto "threw a tantrum, stormed into his room and locked himself in. He turned out the lights' and allegedly broke up some of the furnishings."
    Tim stayed there for close to 48 hours, until DeBlasio arrived on the very night of the flower show. He presented Mr. Tiny with season tickets to the Dodger games and a brand new, shiny, $150 megaphone.
    Mr. Tiny then went on at the Fremont on Friday, while Laugh-In's Chelsea Brown made like Tim and crowned the Flower Festival Queen in Beverly Hills. "I'm tired of playing nursemaid," DeBlasio told Variety when he quit.
    And poor Tim is undoubtedly tired of having no pocket money.

4-21-70
Source: LA Times
Reproduced according to "Fair Use"