Posted on 05/02/2021 10:44:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For anyone who has never heard him before, nothing can prepare you for the opening scene of “Tiny Tim: King for a Day,” where the long-haired singer applies his freaky falsetto to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.”
No more unlikely entertainer has ever captured the pop zeitgeist than the one-of-a-kind Tiny Tim, born Herbert Khaury in New York City in 1932m, who managed to squeeze his 1968 debut album in the top 10 charts between Cream and Jimi Hendrix, and whose marriage to his first wife, Miss Vicki, on “The Tonight Show” was the highest-rated episode in Johnny Carson’s history.
His third wife and widow recalls him in the film as adult, child, male, female, all thrown in a blender. “He was only half gay,” Susan Wellman says in this penetrating and compassionate documentary that lifts the curtain on Tiny Tim’s essential weirdness to reveal (surprise, surprise) an intensely lonely, unloved young man who yearned to be a star and who was destined to be misunderstood. Even in his deeply troubled and dark hours of self-doubt, something in his rich inner life fueled his belief that he would find the recognition he always craved.
When he died at age 64 in 1996, suffering a fatal heart attack during a performance before the Minneapolis Women’s Club while living at a residential hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, Tim had long been marginalized in the world of show business, consigned to performing with circuses or playing school auditoriums for unruly teenagers who laughed at him. But he never gave up his dreams of climbing back to the top.
Swedish documentarian Johan von Sydow lets Tim tell the story, mixing plentiful musical performances with narration drawn from Tim’s diaries (read solemnly by Weird Al Yankovic), illustrating the details with animation and a feast of vintage stock footage. He includes generous amounts of Tim playing and singing before the cameras; with Tiny Tim, it is definitely better to show than tell. There is really no explaining him anyway; he was a rare and precious bird from another world.
From his miserable childhood, raised by harsh parents who never showed him love, to his sad, final days, Tim remained true to himself, an authentic and honest man unlike anybody else in the world whose unique qualities were appreciated by the likes of Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. In the film, the pioneer avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas catches him in some overly arty footage shot at a Greenwich Village beatnik hangout called the Fat Black Pussycat. This was in the prehistoric days of 1963, by which time his Tiny Tim persona was already fully developed.
By the time he died 1996, Tim had long been marginalized in the world of show business. But he had never given up his dreams of climbing back to the top.
From a career that began as a sideshow entertainer in a Times Square flea circus, Tim exploded on the national scene with an instant star-making appearance on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” as co-host Dick Martin stood by, clearly dumbfounded. There was never anything like Tiny Tim — not before or since — and, as the film makes clear, his character was anything but an act.
He claimed he received the gift of his falsetto voice through prayer. “God told me to sing the sissy way,” he said. At the peak of his popularity, he played the Royal Albert Hall in London and headlined Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The film shows him singing “There Will Always Be an England” before a crowd of a half million at the Isle of Wight festival. For a moment, there was a world where Tiny Tim was a star with his hit “Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips With Me” on the radio and him singing and strumming his ukulele on every TV variety hour and talk show on the dial.
Predictably, it didn’t last long, but if you weren’t there when it happened, you wouldn’t believe it.
M“Tiny Tim: King for a Day”: Documentary. Directed by Johan von Sydow. (Not rated. 78 minutes.) Showing Friday-Sunday, April 23-25, and April 30-May 2, at the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., in San Rafael. The film will also be available to stream via TinyTimfilm.com on May 21, and video on demand Aug. 6.
A nice man who entertained us with song and humor. RIP!
I remember cracking up watching him sing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”.
Me too
Honey
There ain’t no such thing as half gay
That’s a wishful thinking canard promulgated by English boarding school queers in denial who joined MI-6 in the Cold War.....and subsequently sold us out
I looked him up on Wiki, and there’s nothing to indicate he’s gay. He was married three time: 8 years, 11 years, and the third one was about a year before he died.
He was not faking. He really was that weird. Harmless guy.
I still have that album in my collection! He demonstrates his vocal range on that album in a song titled: “Daddy, Daddy, What is Heaven Like?”
In highschool i earned a 3 day suspension for the unauthorized broadcast of Tiptoe thru the tulips to a gym full of people during a basketball game.
RIP. Tiny Tim looked and sounded weird. His appearance on early 70’s tv shows was weird, like viewing a car accident. He should have prayed more and worry about fames less.
I set up the sound and lights in the afternoon then returned to work the show later that evening. When I returned to the club about 1/2 an hour before show time, the club was very sparsely populated.
Around 9:30pm Tiny Tim took the stage and started with "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Within two minutes the club owner, someone straight out of the Sopranos, walked up to me behind the sound board. He was pissed. He looked at me and said, "What the f*ck is this sh*it?" Apparently when he booked Tiny Tim he had no idea how "unique" he was. Lol!
Then there's the story of a John Sebastian gig I did during which a similar Sopranos character came up to me during the show saying he wanted to "Smash that f*ckin' guitar over his head."
Good times!
I saw him live at the Camelot lounge and club in Brooklyn in the late 60s? I went for the sideshow appeal because there was absolutely nothing to like. 😆
If it was 20 years ago, that was a special show. It says he died in the 90s!
Tim made the very old song incredibly popular again. There are hundreds of covers of Tiptoe on Youtube. It’s a beautiful melody and the lyrics are sweet.
If you have a chance, check out Nick Lucas singing it way back in 1929.
Nick Lucas Troubadours - Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips With Me 1929
Looks like Phyllis Diller on the left.
It was.
And 40 million people tuned in to see the wedding.
40 million.
Good luck getting ratings like that anymore.
Howard Stern upsets Tiny Tim about Jesus:
https://youtu.be/-5KMjk1UrDk
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