By the dawn of the Eighties, he was on a permanent comeback trail, which included trying to go country, appearing in the campy 1987 horror movie Blood Harvest and remaking “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” with a punk band. Tiny’s humbling last few years are the stuff of docs past, present and future. But when he’s suddenly (and, he claims, divinely) inspired to sing in a trilly falsetto like Bing Crosby on helium, stardom and fame come calling When Tiny gains enough confidence to start singing in public, he’s heckled, and one of his first gigs is being part of a freak show in New York’s Times Square, where he sings near a bearded woman and other human oddities.
But we also learn he was the child of a Lebanese father and Jewish mother, and his father in particular didn’t seem to know what to make of his son (especially when he finds one of his male friends in the same bed, even if they weren’t having sex). Not surprisingly, Tiny grew up feeling lonely, freakish and sexually conflicted. Neither smirky or patronizing, King for a Day uses archival footage, intermittent animation and interviews with friends, fellow entertainers and the last of Tiny’s three spouses to flesh out his back story. But as King for a Day relates, he was also proudly heterosexual (and fond of groupies and a degree of kink, which tormented him). In the way he transformed from schlumpy guy to makeup-plastered carny entertainer, he definitely seems to have paved the way for Alice Cooper. The proto-reality-star aspect only swelled over time: When Tim later talked publicly about his divorce from Vicki, he’s turned his life into a real-life soap opera.ĭuring his heyday, Tim was a proud outsider and even something of a queer icon, and King for a Day makes a claim for him as a forerunner to androgynous pop stars ranging from glam rockers to Boy George.
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As we hear Carson announce during one of Tiny’s later appearances, the wedding was the highest-rated TV event of its time next to the moon landing. In 1969, he and his then 17-year-old girlfriend, Miss Vicki (Vicki Budinger), were married on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, where Tiny had been a recurring guest. He was even booked at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, where fans, either stunned or stoned, cheered as he warbled the British patriotic tune “There’ll Always Be an England,” complete with a megaphone.Īs the Band (who, as the Hawks, backed him on a few tracks on the soundtrack of the oddball 1967 doc You Are What You Eat) once sang, life is a carnival. Pennebaker movie that never materialized), guest-starring on variety and talk shows (especially the massive Laugh-In), and scoring a top 10 album. In seemingly no time at all, he went from being pelted with garbage while singing on New York streets to hanging out with Bob Dylan in Woodstock (we see a quick clip of them together, for a planned D.A. (Even his wardrobe bucked the times: He tended to wear suits.) He also distinguished himself musically: At a time of protest songs, amped-up folk-rock, and psychedelia, here was a guy strumming a ukulele and warbling, in a falsetto that sounded like a lovestruck bird, pre-rock standards like “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” From his look to his borderline-leer smile, he was sweet and creepy at the same time.īut as King for a Day documents - in the most detail yet, aside from Justin Martell’s 2016 bio Eternal Troubadour - Tiny Tim became the least likely household name of his day. Tall and portly, with a protruding nose and hair that looked like a damp mop falling over his face, Tiny didn’t look like any of the tune-in-and-turn-on musicians and earnest folkies who also emerged from the New York club scene. (It hits theaters on April 30th.)įor those who vaguely recall Tiny Tim, or never heard of him at all, the man born Herbert Butros Khaury was the oddest of ducks even during the Sixties, when everybody was letting their freak flags fly. And that rule couldn’t apply more to Tiny Tim: King for a Day, director Johan von Sydow’s overview of the otherworldly life and times of one of the most WTF pop celebrities of the last century. No matter the topic, the finest docs make you realize how much we needed a film on a particular subject.
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