Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Tiny Tim


Tiny Tim, born Herbert Khaury, was born in Manhattan in 1932. Tiny's desire to become a singer started at a young age and he subsequently learned to play the guitar and the ukulele. He eventually dropped out of high school and  started to perform. His first performance was at a lesbian cabaret in Greenwhich village during the early fifties.  He was not yet known as tiny Tim though, at that time he was performing under the stage name of Larry Love .  
By the onset of the sixties Tiny had built a cult following in the Greenwhich village music scene and began incorporating strange renditions of old standards into his repertoire. He finally settled on the name Tiny Tim after the character in Dickens' A Christmas Carol (according to some accounts, it was suggested by a manager accustomed to working with midgets).  
Tiny's more marked rise to fame began after an appearance in the film You Are What You Eat. 
Other film appearances include "Blood Harvest" the 1987 horror flick, "Masters of the Gridiron"(1985) a viking movie with a cast of NFL players, "Normal Love" (1963) the sequel to Jack Smith's "Flaming Creatures" , and "The Yellow Sequence".  
After his movie debut Tiny booked a spot on the comedy tour Rowan and Martin's laugh-in, then TV with appearances on Johnny Carson, Ed Sullivan, and Jackie Gleason. 
In 1968 Tiny Tim signed a record deal with Reprise and his single of "Tip-toe through the Tulips" sold 200,000 copies. He also recorded a Children's album that year called For All My Little Friends.
He was later married to 17 year old Victoria Buddinger (or Miss Vicki) on the Johnny Carson show. They had a daughter named Tulip a few years later but the marriage eventually failed and they divorced after eight years of marriage. He remarried in 1984 to Ms. Jan and that marriage lasted until 1994, they lived in seperate households for the majority of the marriage. He then married again in 1995, this time to a Ms. Sue. 
After his divorce from Ms. Jan he joined a circus where he performed for about 7 months. He also recorded throughout the 80's for a number of different small labels.    
In September of 1996 Tiny had a heart a heart attack while performing at a ukulele festival in Massachusetts. He recovered from that attack but later died after having another heart attack on stage, this time in Minneapolis while playing Tip-Toe Through the Tulips.  
 

1 comment:

Peg A said...

While I enjoy Tiny Tim as much as the next person, this course and blog are dedicated to American Film Comedy, so I do not really see the relevance of this post. Posts should not be focused on music or television, unless there is also a strong connection to cinema somehow; as far as I know Tiny Tim had no involvement with film.