Tiny Tim was as warm and fun offstage as on

A delightful site, and I'm having a wonderful visit. Confirms what I've always suspected, that Tiny Tim was as warm and fun offstage as on. I'm no celebrity hound but his passing left me with a true sense of loss, in that here was someone I would've loved to personally know. The only other performer I felt that about was Dusty Springfield. I'm your age exactly and had a similar reaction to Tiny during those early LAUGH-IN days. He'd reduce me to tears of laughter but not for being a so-called "freak show", (I would've been one to talk), but out of a rapture of fellow feeling. Here was someone with a vision entirely his own, not so much defying convention as being cheerfully oblivious to society's demands of dull decorum, and he fashioned an entertainment as sweet and wholesome as it was subversive and bizarre! Not that I had the intellectual equipment to think of him in those terms, but he really struck a chord with a kid battling it out with stifling small town conformity. Funny thing: I nowadays have a few much younger friends who do crazy performance art. When I showed them the few video clips I've managed to collect, of stuff Tiny did before they were born, their delight of discovery was a thrill to behold. This brings to mind the campaign to get Warners to release a CD compilation. This would be wonderful indeed, but bearing in mind the visual brilliance of his artistry, wouldn't a video collection of his acts, from SULLIVAN and LAUGH-IN and the likes, be another treat and a half? I don't know how copyrights and all that works, but if this is in the realm of possibility, the folks at Rhino would be a good place to suggest it.

One thing that surprises me is that A&E or the E! network hasn't gotten around to a biography yet.

He was such a wonderful person. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Until next time, Michael Will (Montreal)

Reply:

Thanks for the wonderful letter. These video clips are very expensive, thousands of dollars per minute, if you buy them from the archives. Their buyers are mostly other media companies with big budgets. However, bootleg video collections appear on ebay regularly. Just look under Tiny Tim.

E! True Hollywood Story Featuring Tiny Tim Will Air On March 25TH, 2001 at 9:00 EST.