A Dwarf's Full Size Success

Triumphantly, Michael Dunn stands by theater poster of him with show's stars

"I do have a fairly large ego--it has to be. If I were not totally convinced I'm a superior person, I'd be a very inferior one."

Once in a while Michael Dunn unexpectedly catches sight of himself in a full-length mirror. "There I am," he says, "a dwarf. It shocks me. I just can't believe it's me. I don't feel like a dwarf inside." Yet it is as a dwarf that Dunn has achieved fame on Broadway in the role of the preening, malicious "broke-back" of the The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. His remarkable performance, which dominates the show, brought him up from a series of minor stage roles and a career as a nightclub baritone.

Dunn, who is 29, was born of normal sized parents, but was dwarfed by a bone disease called achondroplasia. His parents tried to let him live as near a normal life as possible--especially difficult because he had a genius I.Q. of 178. He even used to play football and was an exceptionally accurate passer.

All his life he has relentlessly refused to treat himself as a tragedy and is furious when anybody regards him as a cute freak or calls him "kid." "It bugs me green," he says, "when people assume I am less than human because I'm less than human size." Once a woman took him into her lap and stroked him like a child. He bit her--"because I'm a man," he angerily explained.

To save his limited strength for his performance, Dunn, munching a hot dog he bought at a stand, is carried to the theater by Ballad actor Dean Selmier.

"I've always lived with constant pain, so that wasn't a factor in whether I made a life for myself or not, I could have copped out, lived with my parents and pulled the dwarf bit."

At Downey's, an actor's hangout, and home to Dunn for five and more hours a day, he talks across the aisle to British actor Albert Finney, star of Tom Jones and Luther.

"I like Downey's partly because most of the time nobody stares at me when there are 48 other people in the room better known than I. When anybody does sneak a look at me, I take it to mean they recognize me from the show. Whether this is right or not, I pretend it is."

An amateur sculptor who uses friends as models, Dunn is flanked by a convocation of clay heads.

"For a while when I wasn't working, I drove everybody crazy, so a friend conned me into sculpting."

At rehearsal of nightclub act which they are preparing, Dunn and Phoebe Dorin discuss song.

"Sometimes when I'm with girls, guys make pretty vicious remarks--and always to the girl. I can handle things like that, but the girls can't because they aren't used to it."

In his apartment Dunn climbs on the toilet to comb his hair before the medicine chest mirror.

"There are remarkably few things I can't do in one way or another, I don't try to beat my limitations, just get around them so, in a way, they don't ever exist."

'I'm No Cutie-Midget Needing a Mother'

Michael Dunn talked to Reporter Diana Lurie about his affliction, the strains he endures and the stratagems he must use.

• When people make a big deal of ignoring my size, they always make me know they're being magnanimous. I've made it possible for most people to operate with me comfortably as normal human beings and to treat me as one. It's mostly a matter of showing them I'm not a cutie-midget or a young man in need of a mother. I'm just an ordinary guy who happens to be 3'10".

• I'm not different than a week before the play openned but now people who have never talked to me want to become buddies. I suddenly have to go overboard to be friendly or they'll say I'm sluffing them.

• I think it's wrong to try to be something you are not. But it's just as bad to refuse to be something you can be merely because there is difficultly involved--or because it endangers a private softness you've grown used to.

• The fact that there are no dwarfs around who are actors--there are a lot of professional midgets and some dwarfs who can speak lines--means there's not an awlful lot of competition for roles, and I was conscious of this when I went into acting.

• You can suddenly find what strength or stubbornness you need to do something just because somebody says you can't. All right, Buster, I'll show you. And maybe you've never done it before. I jumped off a 36' high board once when I was about 10 and couldn't even swim.

• I was in college and was walking with a girl when a guy got out of his car, ignored me totally and told her to get into the car, figuring what could I do. I know just where to kick somebody to break his leg--which I did. I took the girl back to her dormitory and then called the police.

• The function of a suit is to cover the human body. All the American tailors I've met ignore the fact I'm 3'10" and they assiduously try to make the suit look as though I'm 6' tall. It doesn't work.

After curtain, strain and exhaustion tense Dunn's face. He is on stage most of the play in a role requiring constant, spiderlike movement.

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