A Dwarf's Full Size SuccessLife Magazine, February 14, 1964A 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.
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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