Playboy Interview: Tiny Tim

On a Monday night early in 1968, some 35,000,000 viewers were chuckling through "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" when suddenly and without warning, the kinetic frenzy of the show ground to a halt on a grotesque apparition: Herbert Buckingham Khaury--alias Larry Love, alias Darry Dover, alias Rollie Dell, alias Julian Foxglove, alias Emmett Swink, alias Tiny Tim--minced on stage in shoulder-length hair, dead-white make-up and rumpled. Goodwill castoffs, reached into a capacious shopping bag, withdrew a battered, ukulele and burst eerily into song. In the few minutes of air time it took him to finish warbling "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips"--to the accompaniment of much hand fluttering, eye rolling and effusive kiss blowing--this Greenwich Village curio had been elevated from what many feel was richly deserved obscurity to the rank of camp celebrity.

Like most overnight successes, Tiny Tim had paid more than ample dues for the dubious notoriety he began to so ecstatically enjoy. He spent most of the Fifties playing in third-rate amateur contests for derisive New York audiences, and most of the Sixties trudging from club to club in Greenwich Village, hoping for a break. It didn't come until 1965, when the owner of The Scene, a then-popular New York night club-discotheque, took a fancy to Tiny's singular style and booked him as a regular attraction. Two years later, a Hollywood record executive caught his act one night and invited him out to the West Coast for an audition--which led, finally, to Tiny's unforgettable debut on "Laugh-In."

Since then, his baritone-to-falsetto range of voices has been heard in live performances throughout the United States, Canada, England, Australia and South America, in such disparate environs as San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium and Las Vegas' Caesars Palace, where he played to ambivalent audiences for a fat $50,000. His record albums have sold moderately well and Tiny even penned some of his "Beautiful Thoughts" for Doubleday in 1969. Our own Christmas issue of last year included "The Great Crooners," his heartfelt encomium to the pre-swing singers whose spirits he says he feels within him when he performs their songs. But it's through television that Tiny Tim has become best known to the public. Since his "Laugh-In" cameo two years ago, he has appeared on almost every major variety and talk program. It was on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," in fact, that he presented an engagement ring to Vicki Budinger, a pretty teenage Philadelphia fan; and viewers were even treated to the spectacle of their wedding on December 17,1969--an event some found curiously touching but many considered perhaps the grossest publicity event in the history of the medium. No one was neutral about it--or its principal.

To skeptics, that surrealistic ceremony epitomized the phoniness of a manufactured phenomenon, a transparent puton self-made or manufactured by pressagentry to satisfy the suckers' craving for bigger and better freak shows. But there are also those who insist that Tiny Tim is the genuine article. To some who don't doubt his sincerity, he is a loathsome curiosity: ugly, psychotic, cacophonous and, as is frequently asserted, sexually deviant. Others, however, claim to see in him--beyond the bizarre eccentricities of his manner and appearance--a considerable artistic talent and a kind of divine madness.

No attempt to resolve these conflicting views could be complete without understanding how he got that way. The only child of a Lebanese Catholic and a Polish Jewess, he was born and bred in the tenements of New York and, throughout most of his childhood and adolescence, was left alone at home, where he wove his solitary pastimes--fairy tales, comic books, radio, movies, hit records and the Brooklyn Dodgers--into a private world of fantasy dominated by a monomaniacal longing for stardom and a passionate obsession with beautiful girls. Though he was never able to bear the agony of dating, his secret crushes were invariably made public by his conspicuous lack of emotional restraint, which--combined with his other peculiarities--firmly established young Herbert Khaury's reputation as the neighborhood nut. By the end of his third year at George Washington High School, his principal suggested that he drop out and find a job. After a few fumbling attempts at menial work, Herbert turned to show business and, armed with the determination of the Dodgers and a faith derived from deep religious conviction, he finally made it--17 years later.

Remarkably, he hasn't changed much in that time. Former Playboy Associate Editor Harold Ramis, now an actor at Chicago's improvisational Second City, interviewed Tiny Tim on our behalf in the cluttered living room of his permanent suite in an apartment-hotel just off Hollywood's Sunset Strip. "Some people still think he's a put-on," reports Ramis, "because they refuse to accept the fact that such people really do exist. But just looking around his apartment made it very clear that his passions, obsessions and compulsions are very real. His bedroom is a warehouse for mountains of old records, and half of his dresser top is occupied by an ancient windup phonograph. The other half holds dozens of bottles and jars containing his favorite cosmetics, as well as a number of autographed baseballs on plastic display stands. On the floor of his closet, I could see two or three autographed hockey sticks.

"Somehow, it all seemed to fit together; and as we started to talk, I wasn't surprised to discover that he has an incredible memory for the minutest of details from his boyhood years. Later in the day, Miss Vicki left her adjoining suite and sat wordlessly next to her husband, interrupting only to nibble at his ear, kiss his cheek or admire one of the four neckties he was wearing--all gifts from her. She is very pretty and very young and, though estimates of Tiny's age--which he won't give--range from 25 to 50, he doesn't look or act much older than she. It seemed appropriate to begin our conversation with that sensitive subject."

[Q] Playboy: How old are you, Tiny?

[A] Tiny tim: Sixteen.

[Q] Playboy: Let's put it this way: When were you born?

[A] Tiny Tim: Somewhere in the past. I really do feel like I'm still 16 years old, you know. I've grown up with people whose own children are old enough to get married now, but I feel like they've just passed me by; it's the same kind of feeling you get when you're standing still and you see a car whiz past you. But now that I come to think about it, 13 is an even better age. I had a great time when I was 13.

[Q] Playboy: What was so great about it?

[A] Tiny Tim: All the lovely girls to whom I sang so many lovely songs when I used to visit the Catskills with my parents. We used to stay at a resort called Livingston Manor and I can remember being sentimentally involved with two girls at the time--Charlotte Adler and Marlene Barnett. WMCA in New York City used to broadcast a radio show called Jerry Baker sings. It came on at 7:15 in the evening and it was sponsored by I. J. Fox. Anyway, one afternoon I saw Miss Marlene downstairs, sitting on the porch, and I knew I just had to meet her. So I ran up to my room, stood by the open window over the porch and started imitating the Jerry Baker Sings show. I sang a couple of numbers and she started wondering where that voice was coming from. She finally got around to introducing herself.

[Q] Playboy: Do most of your pleasant memories have to do with girls?

[A] Tiny Tim: Let me say most humbly and sincerely that I've always loved beautiful women. Jascha Heifetz was born with the creative ability to play the violin; other people are born with other natural gifts. I honestly contend that I was born with a natural gift for young ladies. I say young ladies because youth--in its purest sense--is one of life's most beautiful things. Believe it or not, my memories of beautiful women go back all the way to the age of three or four. We were living at 609 West 173rd Street and one day I was sitting on the steps of the church on Wadsworth Avenue when two teenage girls came over to me and started giggling and playing with me. When I went home, I couldn't get them out of my system, and even now I remember their faces vividly. When I was five, we were living at 142nd and Amsterdam Avenue on the third floor of a tenement, and I was up every morning at seven o'clock to watch a lovely Spanish girl leave her house on the way to work. It was really thrilling just to have her wave to me as she passed. I don't know what these fantasy adventures meant, but it was as if I had a terrible thirst and these lovely girls were a cool drink of water. You see, I've always loved fairy tales and I always wanted to be part of them, so it was quite natural for me to constantly seek that new adventure. These girls were like fairy princesses to me.

[Q] Playboy: What was it you were looking for in them?

[A] Tiny tim: I was looking for a certain quality in their faces. There were a lot of girls who might have been considered very pretty, but the faces I was looking for were the ones I pictured in my spiritual dreams. That's why I was so fortunate to meet Miss Vicki. She comes so close to being that fairy princess that I sometimes wonder if she isn't.

[Q] Playboy: How often have you found a girl who fulfilled your spiritual dreams?

[A] Tiny Tim: It's always seemed like a miracle when it happened, but I used to have at least two crushes a year. They were all classics to me and they stand out in my memory like Hall of Fame ballplayers. For example, in January of 1949, I met Miss Carmen Quintera. She was 15 at the time--long black hair, a roundish face and luscious heavy lips--and when our eyes met for the first time, I can't begin to describe how I felt. I never could control my passion, and I got so excited that day I had to go hide. But we were in the same home room in high school, so I got to look at Miss Carmen for 15 minutes every day before we split up to go to our classes.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you say "Miss" when you talk to or about girls, married or unmarried?

[A] Tiny Tim: I've always liked the sound of it and I really feel funny when I don't use it. There's something very romantic about it. It reminds me of the South and plantation life, which I've always considered very romantic.

[Q] Playboy: How did your high school heartthrobs respond to your romantic approach?

[A] Tiny Tim: Whenever I got really passionate, they'd think I was just showing off. But I took everything I did very, very seriously. I didn't care that they doubted me, because I knew what was in my heart. I just couldn't control myself. And this wasn't just in regard to girls. The same thing happened with Dial soap. In 1948, we got a sample bar in our mailbox and when I got the scent of that soap, I took it to school with me and for the next two weeks, I told literally everyone I saw how great Dial soap was. Also, during that same period, I started a scrapbook on Elizabeth Taylor. For four months, I drove everyone in my class crazy talking about her.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever ask girls for a date in the conventional manner?

[A] Tiny Tim: I'm not sure. Maybe I was self-conscious about my looks, but I really don't think that was it. Dating would have brought us too close together. It would have spoiled the fantasy. As long as you keep that distance between you and your dreams, then the mystery remains pure. For instance, one night I went by Miss Carmen's house, just to check the address on her mailbox--I didn't feel complete unless I had a girl's address--and as I walked up the street, I saw her coming toward me. I couldn't believe that I was actually seeing her off school hours. When I tried to run away, she cornered me, but I broke away and ran two or three blocks in complete ecstasy. When I finally got about ten blocks from her house, I called her on the phone and said, "I'm sorry I ran away, but you understand." I did manage to ask her for a date once, but she stalled and I said, "It's just as well." I never asked her again.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you feel you were missing out on the contact with girls that most boys enjoy in their adolescence?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, there was a girl named Lillia Courier, who was staying at Livingston Manor in 1944, and I was crazy about her. She was thin, she was lovely and, for 11 years old, she was really beautiful. One day, she was standing behind a tree and asked me to come over. "What do you want?" I asked. "I want to kiss you," she said. "I'll count to 12 and if you don't come over here by then, I won't give you my address when we leave." Well, she counted to 12, but I never made it over to her. I must also tell you that I used to listen to a radio show in the early Forties called Manhattan Merry-Go-Round; it came on at nine o'clock on WEAF and it was sponsored by Doctor Lyon's tooth powder. When I listened to that show, I turned off the light and closed the door to my room and my parents wouldn't dare come in during that half hour. I would just sit there and dream that a beautiful girl was there with me. But even in those fantasies, I never thought of anything lewd. I never even thought of kissing them. That's the real truth. Just to have these girls there in my dreams, to know that they were all mine, that they were saving their best smiles for me, was a pure spiritual bliss. It was a fantastic state of rapture.

[Q] Playboy: Did it disturb you to think that other boys your age were probably having sexual relations with girls?

[A] Tiny Tim: Not at all. I preferred to picture myself in the role of John Payne in those wonderful Hollywood musicals. I always cried with joy when he got back together with June Haver or Alice Faye at the end of the film; that's what I identified with. And I started relating songs to these girls. In 1945, for example, I knew a beautiful angel named Ann Hess. Whenever I'd see her white teeth and thin lips, I'd swoon. Well, Sammy Kaye had a big hit in '45 called Chickery Chick and I used to stand on a corner near her house, hoping that if I whistled that song, she'd come by. And she did come by once or twice when I was whistling, but I just ran away to the other side of the street. One night, I persuaded a friend who had more nerve than I did to stand under her window and call her while I hid across the street. She stuck her head out the window and I got up the nerve to cross the street. She smiled and closed the window.

[Q] Playboy: So far, you've talked exclusively about the neighborhood girls you remember. How did you get along with the boys?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I always hung out with the other kids on the block. Most of the time, we played street ball--curb ball. You bounce a ball off the curb and then run the bases. But they always used me as an extra man, because I didn't hit too well. I always fouled out. Even when I got what looked like a hit, I was too slow to run the bases. Eventually, I trained myself to bat left-handed, because that saves you a step going to first base. I've promised myself that one day I'll go back there and hit a home run. But, getting back to the question, I spent a lot of time alone at home. I never really had many people over to the house, and my parents were away most of the time, working. They both worked in the garment industry; my father worked on sweaters and my mother did dresswork. Frankly, I was alone so much of the time that when my dear parents would finally come home from work, I'd wish that I was alone again.

[Q] Playboy: How did you spend your time when you were alone?

[A] Tiny Tim: I listened to soap operas--Our Gal Sunday, Helen Trent, Aunt Jenny--and I loved to read comic books and fairy tales. And, of course, I listened to records. But starting at the age of five or six, I used to love lying in bed and inventing radio plays of my own. One of my first characters and one of my best was called Red Richard. He and his brother the Atom used to spy against the enemy and they lasted on my personal radio station for at least two years. Then, in 1945, I started a show that lasted for three years called the Tom Berry Show.

[Q] Playboy: Why Tom Berry?

[A] Tiny Tim: It's just a name I liked. Anyway, I used to sing popular hits on that show. It was inspired by a show called Rambling with Gambling, which my mother always listened to while she got ready to go to work. Mr. Gambling used to open his show with Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag. I also remember that he was sponsored by Ticonderoga pencils. Their jingle went, "Ticonderoga pencils have won their way to fame, a fine American pencil, with a fine American name." I used to love to get those pencils. Dixon's Ticonderoga. They still write so smoothly. Anyway, in 1945, I saw Christmas in Connecticut with Dennis Morgan and Barbara Stanwyck, and a song from that film really haunted me: "I'm wishing that I may, I'm wishing that I might have the wish I wish tonight.... " So one morning, I got up and, using that for a theme song, I started my Tom Berry Show. I remember one show that featured a character called the Needle. He was an ordinary mortal named O'Neil who fell down a hole one day and was given a fantastic power by the creatures who live deep inside the earth. When he touches his magic amulet, he turns into an ordinary sewing needle. He can make himself grow to tremendous size or he can make himself very small. When the crooke are planning to rob a bank, he just lies on the table unnoticed--listening. Then all of a sudden, he grows and sticks them with his point. He was also capable of injecting poison into them, but he rarely used that power. Naturally, his archrival was the Thimble, and the two fought a lot; but the novelty finally wore off and I dropped the show.

[Q] Playboy: When did you start singing--on or off your private radio shows?

[A] Tiny Tim: I clearly remember singing for my relatives at the age of six, as well as in school and around the neighborhood. People would say, "You ought to be a singer," so I always had it at the back of my mind. Also, I've always been attracted to fame and I always admired celebrities. By 1945, I'd developed this tremendous passion for records, and I used to buy on the average of four or five new releases a week. I even loved the smell of shellac. I was right on top of the charts and I used to pride myself on my ability to pick a hit before it actually made it. Even after I left school and was having trouble holding a job, I kept buying records and sheet music, looking for a new hit or an old treasure among the dust. My poor parents were struggling, but I always had a melody in my heart.

[Q] Playboy: Had you been graduated from high school by this time?

[A] Tiny Tim: No, I finished three years at George Washington High School and then I was asked to leave. I had already been held back one term, and then one day, I got into trouble with the principal and I was told to leave school. You see, the thing I'd always liked best about school was that it afforded me a shelter in which to dream. My cousin could study for literally eight hours a day, but I couldn't even bear it for an hour. My mind was always in some other place. I guess I was more interested in romance than in education.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of trouble did you get into with the principal?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I had taken a course in typing and filing, just to be near the girls--why else would anyone take typing and filing?--and one day, the teacher asked me to raise the window shade. I had a little trouble doing it right and she thought I was just fooling around, so she said that she was going to send me to the principal. I said, "I don't care. He's just an old man." So she sent me to see him and he asked me why I was there and I said, "Because I called you an old man." "Well, I am an old man," he answered. "Now go home and get your mother." The next term, they threw me out. They thought it would be better for me to go out and look for work. I will say this, however; my one goal is to go back to George Washington High and finish my last year, God willing, for my dear father's sake.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned earlier that you found it difficult to hold down a steady job. What kinds of jobs did you have?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, it was in 1950 that I started working, and I was getting my jobs through the Lawrence Employment Agency at 120 West 42nd Street; I still remember the address. They sent me to a couple of places to apply for jobs, but as soon as the employers found out that I hadn't graduated from high school, they sent me away. You see, I always believed in telling the truth and I feel very guilty when I don't--though I do exaggerate a little sometimes. Like, for instance, if an employer asked me if I had finished school, I might have said yes, but then if they checked up on it, I might have had to tell them, "I never said I graduated." Eventually, I always told the truth. But finally, I did manage to get a job, delivering beads. I thought it was going to be light work, but the beads turned out to be very heavy. I had to push boxes of beads through the streets of the Garment District on a pushcart, and I'll never forget the last order I tried to deliver on my first day of work. The cart turned over and millions of beads spilled into the street. That was the end of the bead job. The agency got me other jobs in the Garment District, but I didn't do very well at them; and finally, the agency refused to send me out again.

[Q] Playboy: Then what happened?

[A] Tiny Tim: Then I got a morning job for a while delivering phone books with all the gentlemen from skid row, poor souls; but that, too, was pretty hard for me--walking up all those flights of stairs with those heavy New York classified books. But the thing I was most afraid of were the dogs, because dogs can bite. Then for a while, I worked as a bobbin boy in a factory, changing the bobbins on sewing machines, but they let me go pretty quick. Finally, in March of 1951, I got a job that I had applied for six times--messenger for Loew's, Inc. I had always loved movies and it was a real thrill to work in the head office of that theater chain. I worked there until August of 1952; it wasn't long after that television started to kill their business. Of course, I've always believed that movies committed suicide by dropping the idea of 3-D films. Even though it was uncomfortable to wear the glasses, it was a great effect.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you love the movies so much?

[A] Tiny Tim: Ninety percent of the people who go to movies are dreamers, and I'm no different. I always say, if you want to see good acting, then go see a stage play. Ninety percent of the moviegoers are looking for a new Marilyn Monroe or a Rock Hudson. That's why I've always read Photoplay, Modern Screen, Silver Screen, Screenland and dreamed about Hollywood. Every Sunday night at 9:15, I listened to Louella Parsons on WJZ and, before her, Walter Winchell, sponsored by Jergens Lotion. You see, Hollywood was the closest thing to a fairyland that I could think of. Everything seemed so mystical and, most important, there were so many beautiful girls there.

[Q] Playboy: Who were your favorites?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, when I saw Jane Powell in Song of the Open Road in 1945, I was so crazy about her that I sent a letter to United Artists, asking her to come visit me at my house. I got a letter back from the head of United Artists, which said, "Though we appreciate your interest in Miss Powell, our stars don't make a policy of visiting the homes of fans. But we are sending you an autographed picture." In 1941, I had gone crazy over Gene Tierney after I saw Belle Starr and Tobacco Road. Also, Terry Moore moved me in The Return of October and I thought that June Haver was so beautiful in The Dolly Sisters that I literally dreamed about her. Another actress I pride myself on discovering before she made it really big was Anne Francis. I saw her in 1951 in a picture called So Young, So Bad and she really stole that picture. She played a beautiful blonde in a detention home for girls and, after seeing that film, I immediately started a scrapbook on her. I think I still have it in New York. I was certain at the time that she was a new screen immortal. But my favorite actress was definitely Elizabeth Taylor. I saw Cynthia five times in 1947 and I thought Miss Taylor was so beautiful that I actually cried. Our wonderful Senator, Mr. George Murphy, was also in that film; and when we appeared on the same Johnny Carson show, I told him on the air that I remembered him in Cynthia. He looked genuinely shocked and said, "Oh, my goodness." Anyway, that was one of Elizabeth Taylor's earliest films and she was just growing up at the time. I like to spot a beautiful woman before anyone else does, like picking a hit song before it becomes a hit. That's why I believe that when Miss Vicki gets a little older, people are going to discover how beautiful she really is.

[Q] Playboy: Were there any actors you admired during this period?

[A] Tiny Tim: Oh, yes! When I was working at Loew's, I had the honor to meet Paul Henreid--a wonderful gentleman and a great actor. Another great actor whom I admired so much in The Moon and Sixpence was George Sanders. He has perhaps the sharpest, quickest tongue in the---- Ooooh, what a man! I've never met him, but I would love to if he wouldn't mind meeting me. Then, too, I remember seeing Vincent Price in The Baron of Arizona in 1950, and I thought he was just marvelous in that film. I had the pleasure of working with him on Laugh-In. We were dressed as musketeers, with mustaches and everything, and I was supposed to hold a sword up to his throat. But I didn't want to do it to a gentleman like that. I wouldn't have cared if he'd done it to me, but I didn't want to do a thing like that to such a great actor. He said, "Go ahead," but I just couldn't. He encouraged me so strongly that I finally did it; but even now, it makes me weep a little to think about how great an actor Vincent Price is. I also had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Van Heflin right here in this hotel. The only one of his films that I missed in the Forties was Grand Central Murder, and it was a real thrill to meet him. I also thought that George Raft had a tremendous magnetism on the screen, and I've always wanted to meet Joel McCrea. I used to love his work. And then there was Randolph Scott--a great cowboy and surely one of the most underrated actors. But that's life. However, I must admit, in regard to all these wonderful gentlemen, that I went to the movies to look for beautiful women and only noticed the actors in between.

[Q] Playboy: When did your own show-business career begin?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, as I said before, I'd always sung around the neighborhood and for my relatives; but in 1950, I started noticing the ads in a paper called Show Business, which was a publication for aspiring singers, dancers, actors and what have you. And one of the ads stated that a promoter was looking for talented singers to audition at night clubs. "Possible break," it said. The first place I was sent was an amateur show at Mom Grant's Riviera on 43rd Street. I bombed out; but this was the first time I performed with a microphone and I knew that I wasn't singing very well with it.

[Q] Playboy: Were you tempted to quit?

[A] Tiny Tim: Oh, no. I'll never forget what my dear Aunt Lea, may she rest in peace, said about me once. Before she passed away, the dear sweet thing said, "Someday he'll be something, because he has nerve." I wish she could have lived to see me now. But, anyway, that's what she said, and this is where baseball comes in. From 1944 to 1947, I listened to every Dodgers game on the radio--every game of the season. In those days, when they went on the road, Red Barber used to describe the game from a ticker tape. And he always said, when someone like Eddie Stanky came up, that the greats of the game had real hustle. Even though it might have been the last of the ninth, with two outs and a three-and-two count on him, Mr. Stanky would manage to get on base--because he had moxie. That's where I got my nerve--from scrappers like Mr. Stanky, Mr. Reese, Mr. Robinson, Louie Olmo and Frenchy Bordagaray. I learned to say to myself, "There are people who have ten times the talent you do, so you've got to hustle." My secret was persistence. Even though I was afraid, I'd take a deep breath, walk in and start singing. I looked at it this way: Even if I was terrible and they tried to throw me out, it might make headlines.

[Q] Playboy: You said you'd walk in and start singing. Where?

[A] Tiny Tim: I was going to amateur shows in 1951, and I met a gentleman named Bud Friar. He was 55 years old, drank nothing but Seven-Up and worked out of an office that was no bigger than my bathroom. He handled any performer he could get his hands on, and one of them was a singer named John McCormack, Jr., a poor old chap of about 75 with no teeth. Another was called Piccolo Pete, who was about 80, had a 21-year-old wife and, naturally, played the piccolo. I kept going to these amateur shows with these people, but I never won anything. Of course, even the winners didn't get much--five dollars for first place, three for second and two for third--but I was even unhappier than they must have been with the way things were going.

[A] The audience understood that we were just amateurs, but I remember one time that someone in the crowd turned on a siren during my number to drown me out. I was persistent and made it a point to finish the song. However, I was beginning to realize that there would have to be a change in what I was doing. While I was still working at Loew's, I volunteered to sing at the Christmas party in 1951. Mr. Nicholas Schenck, the head of Loew's, Inc, at the time, was there; but I bombed out again--terribly. Also, I'd been going to quite a few parties with friends, but the lovely girls there weren't moved by my singing like they were by Frank Sinatra's. The good Lord knows how I feel about women, so you can imagine how disturbing this was to me.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do about it?

[A] Tiny Tim: Two things. First, I started thinking about baseball. I figured that if a pitcher isn't having any luck with his fast ball, he starts throwing curves. So I decided that the old voice had to go. The second thing was that I began to accept Christ in 1952. There I was, living in a tenement on a block crowded with thousands of people, and my heart was filled with cursing and sin. It was like a miraculous gift when I discovered Christ; I had someone I could talk to personally. I started praying about my career. I couldn't figure out why Rudy Vallee seemed to be singing so easily on his records while I was straining my voice, singing very loud and never really going over with audiences. So I kept praying to Christ for a new style as a personal favor; and then all of a sudden, in 1953, like the snap of a finger, the idea came to me to try singing in a higher voice. So I started singing like this: "Oh, for just the chance to love you, would I love you, love. To take you in my arms would always be my goal...." And not only was it easier on my throat but I found that I was thrilling myself as well. I was being moved by my own sound; and I figured that if I could move myself like Mr. Vallee moved me, then something must be in the wind.

[A] When I tried it out on my parents, my father told me that I sounded like a sissy. But I prayed to Christ about it and decided that as long as Christ knew I wasn't a sissy, I had nothing to fear. Then I tried the voice on the kids in the neighborhood whom I'd sung to before and they said, "What happened to your other voice?" I told them, "I lost it." They said, "Can you get it back?" But I was sure I had something, because when I finally tried the new voice at parties, the girls giggled. They didn't swoon like they did for Mr. Sinatra, but the fact that they giggled was a new revelation to me. If my new voice could make them laugh, then that was enough for me.

[Q] Playboy: When did you first try your new voice on stage?

[A] Tiny Tim: In 1954, at a place called the Lion's Club in Greenwich Village. It's burned down since then. When I started using the voice in shows there, the people in the audience would laugh, but then they'd say. "Hey, let's see the kid again." The man who assembled all the talent for the contests called me over to the side one night and said, "Look, kid. When it comes time for the audience to pick the winners, I'm going to hold my hand over your head a little longer to get more applause for you and then we'll split the money." I didn't think that was fair, but I liked to win, so I let him do it. Of course, many times I won legitimately. I was calling myself Larry Love at the time and appearing all over--the Blue Haven on Long Island, the Blue Room in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the Illusions Club in Brooklyn, the Lighthouse Café in New York and more places than I can ever remember. But for the six years I called myself Larry Love, from 1954 to 1960, I used my high voice exclusively--even when I wasn't singing. Even now, it hurts sometimes to talk in my real voice, but I think that's because I had my tonsils removed. I wish I'd never had them out.

[Q] Playboy: Did your parents ever get accustomed to your new voice?

[A] Tiny Tim: There were things other than my voice that disturbed them. In 1954, I read a book of poems by Rudolph Valentino called Day Dreams. The poems were great--what a mind that man must have had--but I also saw a picture of him with his hair hanging low over the right, side of his forehead. I decided that I'd do the same thing, only I parted mine on the other side and let it hang over the left side. Then I let it grow very long on both sides--only half as long as it is now--and people began to look at me on the street. But that didn't bother me, because I felt that it went with the high voice. I felt very romantic and began to feel like my old spiritual self with women. That's when I started wearing white powder on my face--as white as a sheet. I don't suppose my parents could understand why I was walking around the streets that way, but I felt it fulfilled something that had been growing in me since the age of five.

[A] I've always tried to keep myself very clean. You may have heard that I clean my body and my skin many times a day. Well, to me, this is a way to keep in touch with the purity of women. A beautiful woman from the age of 11 to the age of 25 can be the essence of life and youth if she can keep herself morally, spiritually and cosmetically clean. So, to me, this white powder was not a stage effect to help my career; it was the symbol of purity and youth and of my personal 24-hour-a-day involvement with romance. When I'd walk down the street this way, the effect of the powder was fantastic. The prettiest girls would look at me and wonder, and I always dreamed that one day one of them would slip me a note with her phone number on it while we were riding on the bus or the subway. Naturally, some of them laughed and called me an idiot or cursed me, and one girl called me a witch right there in the street. That hurt me for a while, but then I'd smile and think of Christ and forget the pain. You see, pain always comes with pleasure. That's the penalty. I'd rather have both than nothing at all.

[Q] Playboy: How did your parents react to this new look of yours?

[A] Tiny Tim: I was considered weird by my family long before the hair and the white powder. They thought it was pretty odd for me to sit there and listen to every inning of every Dodgers game, just like they thought it was odd for me to listen to the Manhattan Merry-Go-Round alone in my room with the lights out and the door closed. They also thought it was odd for me to listen to Your Hit Parade every Saturday night, writing down the top tunes on index cards. They thought it was odd that I'd rave and curse when a particular song didn't make it as high on the hit parade as I thought it should. I remember how angry I was when Arthur Godfrey's Too Fat Polka didn't make it to the top. The writers of the song threatened to sue Your Hit Parade, so they finally started playing it.

[A] Anyway, when the long hair and the powder came, my parents, who are both pretty normal people, started looking back into their family histories to find out if there had been anyone like me. I told them, "Darlings, don't even try." My father's family were all in Lebanon, but my mother had a large family here and, needless to say, my dear sweet relatives on my mother's side, God bless them, were shocked to the rafters. They were all prospering socially and financially and, since my parents were the only poor ones, I was definitely the ugliest duckling of them all.

[A] I couldn't get any regular jobs anymore, because no one would hire me, so I stayed home a lot and made friends with a whole new generation of children. But when I'd walk around the neighborhood, I really caused quite a stir. People used to say, "Poor thing. His mind must be gone." Or: "Pity his poor parents. If I had a son like that, I'd shoot him." Then I started carrying the shopping bag around with me. You see, I used to buy a lot of cosmetics at Macy's and carry them home on the subway in a paper bag pressed against my chest. So I thought, "Why not carry a shopping bag all the time?"

[Q] Playboy: Did anyone ever threaten you physically because of your appearance?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, thanks to God and Christ, I always escaped that. My motto was, "Keep walking and keep smiling." But I think that people were usually less angry than they were frightened or amazed. The guy who sold the subway tokens in the booth once said, "What is this? Charles Dickens?" There was venom in his voice, but I just laughed and said, "May I have my tokens, please?" Then there was one guy in the neighborhood who used to tell me that I ought to be ashamed to walk around like that, and he could get pretty venomous, too. But the funny thing was that he always looked around to make sure that no one saw him talking to me.

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to believe that you weren't really bothered by the way people treated you.

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I always tried to look at things realistically, and I guess there's no denying that I'm ugly when it comes to looks. In fact, I think I've got the kind of looks that can drive people to madness. But there's a positive side to this, because when the spirit of the Lord is with me, I can have a very pleasant face. When the spirit isn't with me, of course, some people find my face pretty disgusting looking. Naturally, the long hair kind of accentuated that witchlike image some people saw in me, but it never bothered me that much. In fact, the funny thing was that it used to give me some kind of pleasure when people got angry. It was thrilling to me to expose the underpinnings of their hearts.

[Q] Playboy: Did it occur to you that people may have felt threatened by the possibility that you were a homosexual?

[A] Tiny Tim: I suppose most men aren't used to having someone who looks like me walk up to them on the street and say, "Hello, darling." I guess that might have frightened some of them, especially the ones who pride themselves on being tough. But I'll tell you, I worked at a place in the Village called the Page Three, where the boys liked each other and the girls liked each other, and many of these people are my dear friends. They are sweet and nice and I don't think these are the kind of homosexuals that people are afraid of, since they usually mix only with each other. The ones people are afraid of are those who look like average people but prey on children. I can see why people would be so vehement about them, because they are dangerous people. In fact, I wouldn't even classify them as homosexuals. The real name for them is maniacal fanaticals. But I really think there's a difference between these types and the ones who mix only with their own crowd.

[Q] Playboy: Do you condone homosexuality among consenting adults?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, the Scriptures say that the effeminate shall not enter the kingdom of heaven and neither shall the homosexual. But the Scriptures also say that judgment is reserved for the Lord alone. It's wrong for one man to judge another. Can you condemn a man who does charitable work even though he doesn't believe in Christ? Or can you praise a man who does believe in Christ but fails to do what Christ teaches? There are those who pride themselves on their religious feelings; they preach about it and they have lily-white hands and polished faces. They preach on television and win the hearts of many; then they pass the bucket around. I must admit that the things they preach are good, but the good Lord sees that they live in fine houses while the world is starving. If a man has a personal communion with Christ, then the Lord is the only one who can judge him. It's not up to the preacher to decide who is going to be saved and who isn't. If I didn't believe in that, I could never have made it in show business, considering the way things were going for me before 1960.

[Q] Playboy: Were you helped again by divine guidance?

[A] Tiny Tim: It was more a question of confidence. As I said before, my parents were deeply shocked by what I was doing and, besides that, they were both sick; my father had diabetes and my mother had high blood pressure. In fact, not a day went by that I didn't expect them to suddenly drop dead. But in the Psalms, King David said, "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." So I prayed to Christ, knowing that he could see the loneliness in my heart. I told him that as long as he thought it was right for me to be in this business, I would never stop trying. I figured that even if my parents died before I made the grade, at least their spirits would know.

[A] I told them that I'd be a great star of the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, but my mother said, "He's sick." I said, "Don't you dare discourage me. Someday you'll see my name in lights on Broadway, because even though you think I'm a bum now, I have Jesus Christ with me, and if he helps me play the game right, then I'm going to make it." I refused to be defeated spiritually. And I finally did make it. That's how I know Jesus Christ has always been with me and that's why he means so much to me. In 1968, after I'd made it, people would ask me how long I thought it would last. I always told them that it didn't matter, because I'd been fulfilled. I told them that they were talking to a real miracle in show business and challenged them to find anyone who was considered as abnormal as I was who still made the grade. What the world couldn't see, what my parents couldn't see, was that Christ was there to hear my silent prayers.

[Q] Playboy: Besides praying, what were you doing--before the big break came--to keep your career alive?

[A] Tiny tim: Well, I definitely wasn't making it with the high voice, although almost every morning, I would get calls from girls who worked in offices and had heard from someone about my voice. I'd sing for them over the phone, and apparently the word got around, because I was eventually getting so many calls that I had to put a stop to it. I didn't really mind getting calls from girls, but the first time I heard a man's voice on the line, I said, "Look, don't call me again." I never wanted to talk to a man. In fact, I never even had the friendship of a man, except for the boys I used to play ball with and the men I met through business. Even now, when girls come to visit me, I tell them, "Bring ten girlfriends or come by yourself, but don't bring a man." I never wanted a man around. It was strange. Anyway, I always thought of the high voice as my Clark Kent voice during the Fifties, and I only used my low voice in those rare situations when I wanted to be Superman.

[A] But when I didn't make it by the end of the Fifties, I got scared. I started to feel like time was passing me by. So as we inched into the Sixties, I changed my name to Darry Dover and eventually started using both the high and the low voice for variety. Now, I wasn't too happy about that, because I've always thought that if I had made it on the high voice alone in the Fifties, I could have been as big as Elvis Presley. You see, when an artist makes it with a bang, he can usually stay in that mystical fairyland of success for only two or three years before the public gets used to him. Then he has to start working a little harder. I figured that if I made it on the high voice, I could switch to the lower one when the novelty wore off. Then I could have lasted a couple of more years with the low one. But when some people found out that I had a lower voice, they were a little discouraged. It didn't seem to fit the image. I'd created with the high voice. I still don't want to show all my voices at one time, though I may not have a choice. It seems some people don't know that I have a country-and-western sound, a vaudeville sound, a Forties sound, a Sinatra sound, a blues sound and many others, but I'm reluctant to use them all at once. I think, it would mix up an audience completely.

[Q] Playboy: What makes you think you could have been as big as Elvis Presley?

[A] Tiny Tim: I'm not talking about performance; I'm talking about the sound. I really think that if I could have captured the moisture that Rudy Vallee had in his voice when he recorded, my sound would have been fantastic.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean by moisture?

[A] Tiny Tim: The only way I can describe it is that it's as if the voice were echoing with water all around it. It's tied up in the way his voice is placed on his records; on some of my records, the voice is heard on top of everything else, and that's not the way it should be. But I don't think anyone, myself included, really knows how to record a voice with consistent success. Sometimes a voice will come out sounding better on a small tape recorder than it will in a studio. You've got to catch that voice like a butterfly. I try to think like an A&R man [a record-company programing executive] in regard to my own records and, to tell you the truth, I wouldn't buy some of the songs I sing.

[Q] Playboy: As it turned out, you didn't make it quite as big as Elvis in the Fifties. When did your luck start to change?

[A] Tiny Tim: Not for a long time. But I had the strength of Christ, as well as my baseball philosophy, to keep me going. "Keep plugging," I told myself. "The game is never over until the last man is out." I thought of the Dodgers' losing the pennant in 1951, and then--thanks to God, Christ and Saint Francis of Assisi--coming back to beat the Yankees in 1955. I never forgot the way our Dodgers came back and I knew I could do it, too. "Every day is a new day," I said, "and every page is a new page." So I started making tours of the music publishers' offices at 1619 and 1650 Broadway--ten floors in one building and fourteen in the other. Before I'd knock on their doors, I'd say to myself, "Success, you're happening today." Then I'd walk in with the songs I'd written and when they threw me out, I'd say, "Well, you just threw away a million bucks, but I'll be back in a few months." Then I'd just knock on the next publisher's door and do the same thing all over again. And I did go back every six months.

[Q] Playboy: With what results?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I almost made it several times that way. But besides the publishing thing, I met a man named George King in 1960. Mr. King shared an office in the building that housed WEVD, the Jewish radio station, and he was really down and out at the time. The way he earned his living was to put ads in Show Business, saying that he was looking for new talent. The new talent would pay him something like $25 and, in return, he'd promise to put them in a film to be shown to talent scouts. He was a very complex person. He looked like a large Errol Flynn--very handsome--but he'd go for days without changing his clothes and he always carried a flask in his hip pocket filled with Tropicana orange juice and Seagram's Seven. Now, Mr. King knew I didn't have any money, but he'd been trudging around all over the world for so long that he didn't mind gambling a little. He said to me, "Kid, you've got something." And he took out a scrap of paper and listed all the different voices and all the different kinds of songs I could do.

[A] Then, in October of 1960, he took me down to the Village and we walked into the first coffeehouse we saw. Mr. King listened to what was going on for a while, talked to the owner for a few minutes and then said, "Oh, by the way, I've got someone with me." Then he turned to me and said, "Grab your ukulele and give him a song." I was pretty shocked, but I took it as a challenge and instead of retreating into myself, I started to sing. I did Tip-Toe Through the Tulips and a two-voice duet and it got a laugh, so I started doing free shows in the Village. My name was getting around, but it wasn't until one and a half years later, March 1962, that I got my first paying job, at the Café Bizarre. I got ten dollars a night for two nights and Mr. King said, "Buddy, I'll take 40 percent, but I think I'm worth 50." He did deserve it, too, because he worked with me for a year and a half and didn't make a cent from me until that night. Anyway, I lasted two weeks at the Bizarre and then I got two weeks at the Café Wha. They finally let me go at the Wha because of the way I sang Nature Boy. I really felt that song so strongly that I used to pound on the floor and bite my hand. They thought it looked like an epileptic fit, so they threw me out.

[A] Then I sang at The Third Side and The Playhouse Café; and at the end of 1962, I recorded an album called Darry Dover and the White Cliffs. I really thought the album was going to be a big thing for me. I told all my friends I was going to have an album out, and then the whole thing fell through. The songs were off-key, the guys who produced the record started to fight with each other and Atlantic Records decided not to buy the tapes. So when 1963 rolled around, I was really down in the dumps, but I prayed to Christ, picked myself up again and went back to the Village. It was around that time that Mr. King named me Tiny Tim. He got me a job at the Surfside playing for pennies, and every night he'd come down there, empty the basket on the table and split the coins with me. But I was fired after two weeks and the owner suggested that I sing in a place with a jewel-box revue--where the men dressed like the ladies. But I was beginning to get hot and the law of averages was working for me, and I got the best job I'd ever had at a place called the Big Fat Black Pussycat.

[Q] Playboy: Did the men dress like ladies at the Big Fat Black Pussycat?

[A] Tiny Tim: No, it was the kind of coffeehouse that attracted all kinds of people, from the poorest to the richest. The rich ones would come to the Village out of curiosity, but they actually liked what I was doing. The man who'd hired me, Mr. Tom Ziegler, really had faith in me and never fired me, although he could have any time he wanted to. In the six months I worked there, I really built up a name. Other artists were doing the same thing at the time--making the rounds of the coffeehouses. Bill Cosby and David Frye were breaking in then, and I worked in the same places they did. Richie Havens was at the Pussycat with me, and there was also another fellow named Fred Smoots. He didn't make it too big.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you leave the Pussycat after six months?

[A] Tiny Tim: I met a wonderful colored lady named Miss Stella Mans, who was working at the Page Three, which was the Copacabana of the Village for those who never quite made the grade. It was over on the plushier side of the Village, farther west, and many of the people who came in really had money. Anyway, Miss Mans took me down there for an audition and the response from the audience was terrific. I'm not saying that every show I did in front of an audience at the Page Three was a good show. In fact, in all the time I worked there--from ten at night to four in the morning, six nights a week--I was lucky if I did three good shows out of every ten. Other great performers who worked there could outsing me a million times, and they would do nine good shows out of ten; but I knew from baseball that, according to the law of averages, even a guy who doesn't get a hit very often may come up with that big clutch homer. To me, a clutch situation was one in which I knew there was some important show-business person or a celebrity or even just a pretty girl in the audience. That doesn't mean I'd always make it in the clutch. Even when a performer knows he should be at his best, he just might not make it. You can't predict the outcome of a performance. But I do know that when a person freezes in the clutch, it's because he quit on himself in the middle of the song. No matter how you feel when you sing a song, you've got to re-create the mood of the composer; and if you feel that mood begin to slip away, you've got to force the life back into it again.

[Q] Playboy: Did you like working at the Page Three?

[A] Tiny Tim: I loved every minute of it. I was making $40 a week, and even though the girls liked each other there, I loved having so many beautiful young girls around. But since there were also boys who liked boys there, the only straight people in the club were the owners, the bartenders, the entertainers and a few of the clientele. In fact, some of the men who worked there would use the word she when they were talking about other men, but we all kind of got used to that. It became sort of a family kind of speech. I used to sing I Enjoy Being a Girl and I Feel Pretty for them--not as a joke but because I liked the melodies. Then in 1965, the police closed the Page Three. A male customer had asked one of the waitresses for a woman, so she brought a girl over and the guy turned out to be a cop. So there I was--out of a job and stuck with a reputation for working in perverted places.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have trouble getting work after that?

[A] Tiny Tim: I went through two new managers pretty quickly, and by December of '65, it was depression time for me again. One night, I was feeling so bad that I changed my name to Rollie Dell and went down to an amateur show at the Champagne Gallery in the Village. I won the contest and that made me feel pretty good, so I went up to The Scene, a discothèque I'd heard of on 46th Street. A man named Steve Paul had taken a cellar and turned it into a night spot for rich kids who wanted to act like Village hippies. I'd never worked for teenagers and I hadn't worked outside the Village, but I knew they let people come in to perform there, so I decided to give it a try. I walked down the stairs and they were about to throw me out when a wonderful colored chap recognized me from the Village and said, "Hey, that's Tiny Tim." Mr. Paul went out on stage and said, "Don't go yet, folks. You've got to hear this guy." To me, it was like the last of the ninth, with a three-and-two count and two outs, and I was never in better voice; the spirit of the Lord was never as strong in me as it was then and I really knocked the place down. I was flabbergasted. The Scene was everything I wanted: It was outside the Village and it was packed with lovely teenage girls. Mr. Paul asked me to come back the next night and I was very happy--until I got home and found my building on fire. Thank God nothing happened to my room.

[A] But I was afraid to go back to The Scene the next night, because I thought it might have been a fluke, so I wrote a letter to Mr. Paul, thanking him and saying that if he wanted me back, he could find me at the address I gave him. Then I didn't hear from him for over a month. My father told me that it was a sign from heaven, telling me to give up, but I told him that he couldn't say it was a sign just because he wanted it to be. To make matters worse, one of the guys from my neighborhood told me that it was a shame what I was doing to my parents. He said that people were talking about me and that if I didn't cut my hair by Lincoln's Birthday, he and his friend were going to cut it for me. But I prayed to Christ and, sure enough, the next day Mr. Paul called me; and for the next two and a half months, I worked at The Scene.

[Q] Playboy: For how much?

[A] Tiny Tim: Without pay. But I didn't mind that, because, with all the beautiful girls there, it was like heaven to me. In January of 1966, the publicist for The Scene saw something in me and got me booked onto the Merv Griffin show. Well, when they finally put me on, it caused such a stir that they got more letters than they'd ever gotten before. Mr. Arthur Treacher asked the audience if they wanted me back and they said yes, so I was supposed to be signed for six more shows. But Mr. Hugh Romney asked me to come to Los Angeles to work for him and I decided to go. No one could understand why I wanted to pass up six Merv Griffin shows, but I told them that Mr. Romney had really stuck by me and helped me when very few people believed in me and that I must pay back the debt I owed him.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Tiny Tim: Mr. Romney had an underground show called the Phantom Cabaret at the Little Theater near the Hollywood Ranch Market. Del Close, Severn Darden, Hugh Romney and myself were in the show. My managers weren't too happy that I'd left New York just then, but they gave in and told me to be back in about five weeks to do the Merv Griffin show. Then I found out that letters had started coming in from people who were violently shocked by my first appearance. They were calling Merv Griffin about me at three o'clock in the morning and, apparently, the Westing-house people decided it would be a good idea not to have me back at all. So perhaps it's just as well that I didn't stay in New York. Another good thing about having gone to California was that I really made friends with some very influential people there. Mr. Lenny Bruce, Mr. Bob Dylan and Mr. Donovan all came to see me; and the day before I went back to New York, I did a concert at the Committee in San Francisco.

[Q] Playboy: Were you happy to get back to New York?

[A] Tiny Tim: No, I found that the gloom began to set in again. Mr. Paul started paying me $50 a week at The Scene, but I felt that I'd been there long enough. On top of that, business started to fall off for Mr. Paul and the crowds were getting used to me. The novelty was wearing off. But I had gotten accustomed to the place and was performing well. I kept on smiling at the teenagers and finding new girlfriends, but The Scene was in bad shape and it looked like they'd have to close. Then, in December 1966, The Young Rascals did a benefit there and packed the place again. The Blues Project came in next and Mr. Paul told me that as long as The Scene lasted, I'd have a job there. I was starting to feel that I was slipping with the crowd, but he said, "Tiny, I'll keep you here no matter what happens." And he kept his word. Anyway, booking these great bands put The Scene on the map again. Then, at the end of 1966, someone who remembered me from the Griffin show cast me in the pilot for Ironside with Raymond Burr, and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary put me in his film You Are What You Eat.

[A] Meanwhile, Mr. Paul had booked The Doors and Spanky & Our Gang and he took me to the Monterey Pop Festival; but by June of '67, I still felt I was nowhere. The pilot for Ironside had already been screened, but no one had offered me anything else and, even though I still had a job at The Scene, I wondered how long it would last. What would I do if The Scene closed? I sat in my room and prayed. It was like a confessional. I'd painted "Jesus Christ Is My Lord" over two of the walls, and he knows of the many lonely hours and prayers. But times were getting tight. I'd been written about in the press while I was still playing the Page Three and everybody already knew me. So where could I go? What could I do? Well, with my baseball philosophy, I knew there had to be another change. If I hadn't made it by the end of 1967, I'm sure I would have cut my hair.

[A] But that's not all. I was planning something else at the time--something I call two-tone make-up. Half my face would be made up white and the other half violet. I was going to call it "Split Personality for the Seventies." I actually tried it three or four times, but I couldn't get violet, so I used the deepest tan I could get. I was made up that way one day on the subway and, with my long hair, it must have looked pretty surprising. Anyone who saw me from one side would think I was brown-skinned, but then when they passed me, they saw I was half white. They did some quick double takes.

[Q] Playboy: Since you obviously didn't cut your hair, we assume that you did make it by the end of 1967.

[A] Tiny Tim: Yes, it was a rainy Monday night in August and there were very few people at The Scene that night. I was tired and I didn't feel like going on, but I started with Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella and I told myself, "Look. Even though there are very few people here, you've got to keep hustling." So, as I started picking up my energy, I heard someone laughing and by the time I got into my two-voice duet, this guy was really cracking up. It turned out to be Mr. Mo Ostin, who at the time was something like general manager of Warner Bros. Records. He's the president now. He said afterward that he wanted to sign me, so I gave him my lawyer's number--I'd gotten a lawyer by then--and, together, they worked something out. By November of '67, I was called out to Hollywood and I left behind at least six managers who thought they still had me committed to them.

[Q] Playboy: Why had you hired a lawyer, and how did you manage to acquire so many managers?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I used to sign with anyone who came along and expressed an interest in me, and that's why I was encouraged by my friends to get a lawyer. Mr. Paul was waiting to manage me when the others had all given up on me, but he should have taken me to his lawyers when I first started at The Scene. I wish I'd done it then. As things stand now, Mr. King still claims we have a 100-year contract and a couple of guys are trying to take me to court. But the thing that bothers me most is what happened with Mr. Paul. I had promised him that he could manage me when I made the grade; and when I started the first album in Hollywood, he flew out to sign me. But in spite of all the things he'd done for me, I was afraid to sign with him. Mr. Ostin had paid my way out there, he was paying for my room and board and paying for me to make the record; and he and Mr. Perry, who was producing my record, made it pretty clear that they didn't want Mr. Paul to manage me. Now, I'd been looking for a break for a long time and when you finally see one coming your way, you have to balance it more delicately than an acrobat, because the slightest word or the slightest gesture can upset the whole thing. So even though Mr. Paul had been waiting for me almost two years, I told him that I couldn't sign with him. He couldn't believe it. He just packed his bags and left. He did invite me to come back to The Scene, but he told me that he would never trust anyone again. I regret that I had to do that, but it was a decision that had to be made.

[Q] Playboy: Did you feel that your career was really launched at last?

[A] Tiny Tim: When 1968 rolled around, it was like a new dawn. My father said that I had finally stopped swimming in the water and had landed on shore. In December of 1967, I auditioned for Rowan and Martin and made it. My Laugh-In appearance, of course, led to nationwide acceptance--and rejection. I got a lot of terrible mail, but at least it showed that people were moved enough to write in. Once, a guy stopped me on the street and said, "You make me want to throw up my breakfast." So that kind of mail didn't surprise me. I know I have a talent for making people either very happy or vehemently angry. Though it may be frightening or hurtful, I'd rather deal with that than with the Madison Avenue guy who smiles, pats you on the back and says he'll give you a call. The other may be scary, but at least it's real.

[Q] Playboy: With whom did you finally decide to sign for management?

[A] Tiny Tim: Mr. Ostin suggested Roy Silver, so I signed with him in March; and he did such a good job of publicity that by May, the whole country knew about me. I played the Fillmore Auditorium, Caesars Palace, the Fontainebleau, the Latin Casino and concerts all over the country. But the crowds weren't that big and I think it would have been a better move for me to accept an offer from Rowan and Martin for a tour during the summer of '68 at $500 a week. It would have been good for me to break in as a stooge, instead of shooting for the top before I was really ready for it. My management was going for the big name and the quick dollar, but the only advantage I can see in it now is being able to say that I played Caesars Palace for $50,000. It was a dangerous undertaking and it failed. Another bad move was rejecting a film offer from Bob Hope. My managers insisted on some kind of script change he wasn't willing to make and I said, "Look, you don't tell Bob Hope what to do." But they insisted that they were handling my career and that they knew what was best for me.

[Q] Playboy: How was your recording career doing at the time?

[A] Tiny Tim: That was another big problem. People thought I was comparable to Mrs. Miller when my records first came out--just some kind of a fad. That's why a lot of disc jockeys weren't playing my records. They'd play two or three bars, just to lead into a station break. You see, records usually break in Los Angeles first and then move East; but it was my dear friends in New York who broke Tip-Toe first. Los Angeles was the last place it broke. In fact, both the album and the single of Tip-Toe broke weirdly. Records usually climb very fast on the charts when they break, then they hit a peak and drop slowly until they fall off the charts completely. Now, my first album went astronomically high for a first album and eventually sold close to 200,000 copies. It went very quickly to number eight on Cashbox; but the next week, it fell to 15, then to 35, then to 70 and then off the charts.

[A] Then we had another bad break. We didn't get our second album out until January 1969, and, in the meantime, someone released an album of the tapes I'd made in 1962 under the name Darry Dover. If you recall, I had sung off-key on it and it sounded just terrible. Besides that, the drawing of me on the cover was really freaky. It looked like I had lipstick on. Well, they sold this thing in supermarkets and anywhere else they could and, because the people thought it was my real second album, it sold about 100,000 copies. We finally got a temporary injunction to stop them from selling it, but the damage had been done. It killed the sales of the legitimate second album. If we'd had ours out in July, this wouldn't have happened, and I really think my managers were wrong in delaying the second album so long.

[Q] Playboy: Were you thinking of separating from Roy Silver at that time?

[A] Tiny Tim: The decision was made for me. While I was in England doing a concert at Albert Hall, Bill Cosby fought with Roy Silver and pulled out of the agency. It had been Campbell, Silver, Cosby, but they got into a financial dispute and when Mr. Cosby pulled his name out of it, that did it. That's the way it is in this fairyland type of business. If someone puts a scratch in the magic and it doesn't heal quickly, everything dies. When their agency broke apart, I stuck with Mr. Silver for a while, but then I got involved with another manager. Unfortunately, that didn't work out too well, either. He was a wonderful gentleman friend of mine, but now he's taking me to court. That's just the way these things work out sometimes. Now I'm with Mr. Ron DeBlasio.

[Q] Playboy: Has this succession of managers had any effect on your financial position?

[A] Tiny Tim: To tell you the truth, when I requested a release from my past management last September or October, they wouldn't let me go until I'd signed a contract stating that I would not question the way they had managed my funds then or any time in the future. In other words, we were in hot water and I had to start my career all over again. But I have been very fortunate since then and, because the Lord is always with me, we've regained about twice as much as we lost in that deal.

[Q] Playboy: You said earlier that you used to think of Hollywood as a magical fairyland. In the light of your experience there, has your opinion of it changed?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I think for those that are really successful in this business, especially after so many years of struggle, it really is a fairyland. It's a fantastic thrill for me just to be on Mr. Carson's show; and I wouldn't care whether he paid me $350 or $35. But I will say this: Success can be very dangerous. Once you make the grade, you are surrounded by envious people trying to get into the act, telling you what to do with your money, (continued on page 162)Playboy Interview(continued from page 80) what to do with your looks, how to smile and who not to offend. I was very fortunate in that I've always been aware that the allure of worldly success can be very perilous unless you've got something to guide you. That's why I find it so important to have Christ in my life. I'll tell you one thing, though: If I hadn't obeyed the Scriptures, if I'd sinned with women, I don't think I would have made it.

[Q] Playboy: What do you consider sinful in regard to women?

[A] Tiny Tim: In the book of Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Bible tells us that the man who looks at a woman with lust has committed the same sin as the man who touches her. So I believe that a kiss is as bad as an intimate relationship. One little kiss on the lips can be the opening of a door; and if one makes a mistake and does kiss, he must stop and put up barriers in himself so that it won't happen again. I've slipped with women in the past, I've kissed women and touched them, but I never had an intimate relationship until after my marriage. That's the honest truth. When I slipped, I never laid down on my bed and said, "Oh, well, I guess it's all right to be like the rest of the world." No. I would say, "Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, I've slipped. Even if you turn your back on me now, I'll never quit trying to find grace again." You see, there are always temptations--things we'd like to do--but just because we do them doesn't mean that it's right to. Now, I'm no saint; I'm just a big sinner. But Christ kept me from kissing and touching women for a long time and even when I did fall a little, I never fell completely. In our marriage, Miss Vicki and I never have S-E-X unless it's to have children. In other words, no seed is spilled for joy, only for blessed events.

[Q] Playboy: What's wrong with a little joy?

[A] Tiny Tim: I'm not saying that you can't enjoy it, only that the pleasure of doing it can't be more important than the Lord's commandments. In Tobias, it says, "We must not be joined together like the heathen who know not God." In other words, since the Lord is always with you, everything you do must serve Him. To make L-O-V-E strictly for pleasure would serve only the man and the woman. But when it's done to serve God, the pleasure is even greater than when, it's done simply for lust.

[Q] Playboy: Many people were surprised, to say the least, when you announced your engagement. How did you and Miss Vicki meet?

[A] Tiny Tim: I was on a promotional tour for my Beautiful Thoughts book--40 cities in 20 days--and Philadelphia was one of the first stops. On June third, 1969, at about ten minutes after 12, I walked into this department store in Philadelphia and about 5000 people were waiting to see me. As I walked through the crowd toward the booth where I was going to sing and sign books, I noticed a lean and lanky girl waving at me. When I saw her face, I started to swoon. Imagine that. Her face stood out in a crowd of 5000 faces. By the time I got up to the microphone, I felt like it was the last of the ninth again and the tension was starting to build. I looked back at her and she was still looking at me. I looked a third time and she still didn't turn away. Most girls will look at me once, but when they see that I'm getting a little flustered, they turn away. She didn't and, as I was signing the books, I couldn't get her out of my eyes. I wanted to get her address, but I was afraid it would seem too bold and fresh. I signed two copies of the book for her, but I didn't ask her for her address or give her mine. I felt like I'd struck out in the clutch.

[A] Later that afternoon, I was speaking at a press luncheon and I told them that it was a great pleasure to be there but that my mind was still somewhere else. I told them I'd met a beautiful girl but that I had frozen in the clutch. Everybody seemed to get a big kick out of that and one reporter told me he'd print a story asking for the mysterious girl to identify herself. I figured that she probably wouldn't see it in the paper; but when I got back to Philadelphia to visit more stores that weekend, there she was standing in the crowd. This time, we exchanged addresses and she said she'd come to each of the three stores I was to visit that day.

[A] I used to give trophies to all the beautiful women I met; so when we'd finished at that first store, I called a trophy shop and ordered a very tall one with an angel's figure on the top reaching toward heaven. At the bottom, it said, "To the world's most beautiful girl, Miss Vicki, 1969, from Tiny Tim." It cost $55. Then, when she showed up at the second store, I gave her this three-and-a-half-foot trophy and explained to the crowd that I'd just met her but that if they looked in my book, they'd see that I always gave trophies to beautiful girls. Then the reporters started to question her, and it really started to sell books. We began to correspond after that.

[Q] Playboy: When did you see her next?

[A] Tiny Tim: That was the seventh of June and I saw her next in August, when she came to Atlantic City with her beautiful mother. They arrived in the afternoon of the 18th, and on the morning of the 19th, I asked her to marry me. She jumped up and down and said she'd love to, but I insisted that we get the approval of her parents before we went ahead. After all, I know that I'm a little stranger than most people; and even if she were older than 17, I would have wanted both her parents to agree. Since I'd actually only been with Miss Vicki twice before, I expected her mother to say no, but she called me and said that whatever Miss Vicki wanted was fine with her. Then they called her father, who was away at the time, and he said the same thing. I was thrilled that they agreed so quickly; but the next day, after they had a chance to think it over, they wanted to talk to me about it. They asked me questions for about two hours, but I told them, "I don't blame you. If I had a daughter, I'd be ten times as tough."

[Q] Playboy: What kinds of questions did they ask you?

[A] Tiny Tim: They wanted to know whether or not I'd get tired of Miss Vicki in a month or so and break her heart. I told them that I never get tired of a girl I like, and that's just as true for the ones I met in 1942 as it is for the ones I meet now. I still have a cookie given to me by beautiful Miss Corky in 1967, which I keep in New York in an empty Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass Velva Shampoo jar sealed with Scotch tape. I also still have Miss Cleo's gumdrop and many more mementos. I would be just as faithful--more, in fact--to Miss Vicki. Then they asked me if I was sure I wouldn't change my mind, and I told them that Miss Vicki was the girl I'd been dreaming of all my life. I had wanted to get married in September, but her mother asked me then if I thought it would be better to wait a couple of years or at least until Miss Vicki turned 18. I said I'd go along with her wishes, knowing that Jacob waited 14 years for Rachel, but I really didn't think it would do any good to wait. Miss Vicki already knew all the low things about me. I once told Mr. Hefner that when I meet a girl, I always tell her all there is to know about myself, because I believe a man should tell a woman everything before they get together.

[Q] Playboy: What are some of the low things you felt compelled to admit to Miss Vicki?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I told her about all the lovely girls like Miss Cleo and Miss Corky, and that I'd kissed a few. I told her that I can get very emotional when the Dodgers are playing baseball or when the Maple Leafs are playing hockey. I can remember one time, in fact, after we were married, when the Leafs were fighting to get out of last place. I called Miss Vicki's parents in Philadelphia and had them put the phone next to a radio, so that I could listen to the last part of the game. That's one example, and I tell you I can be very hard to live with during a hot pennant race. If my teams lose, I just want to be alone. I also told her that I'm moody and funny-tempered, and about my cosmetics and toilet habits, and that I often eat meals alone. She thoroughly understood. So I told Mr. and Mrs. Budinger that Miss Vicki wouldn't know any more about me in two years than she already knew. I also assured them that I believe in Jesus Christ and that I was not just interested in taking Miss Vicki to B-E-D. I told them that the only intentions I have are the right ones. They didn't say any more--just "Welcome, Son." So I thanked them and told them that even though it might not be easy to accept me right away, because of the difference in our backgrounds, they'd come to know me in time.

[Q] Playboy: You've often said in the past that you'd never get married. What changed your mind?

[A] Tiny Tim: There's something about Miss Vicki that I can't describe, but I found it impossible to resist. It's a strange spiritual uplift that moved me every moment we were together. Even now, in marriage, it moves me more and more. She is so beautiful that this thing has grown and grown, from a mustard seed into a vine. It's true that I told people I could never get married, but I believe that there are things a man wants for himself and things the Lord wants for him. I believed that I wanted Miss Vicki and, after that, it was a question of deciding what the Lord wanted me to do. Believe me, the four or five months we were engaged seemed like two years because of the mental and spiritual pressures I felt.

[Q] Playboy: Did anyone advise you against the marriage?

[A] Tiny Tim: There was a minister who thought we should wait, because he didn't think her belief in Christ was on an equal basis with mine.

[Q] Playboy: Did anyone suggest to you that perhaps Miss Vicki was simply marrying you to start a career of her own, or that she might be trying to use your name and influence?

[A] Tiny Tim: One or two people might have said that, but I think I was the one who questioned her motives more than anyone else. Even if she didn't have theatrical ambitions, I knew that if she had married me because of some Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy, it probably would wear off in a year or two. Of course, because of my belief in the teachings of Christ, I don't believe in divorce, so I prayed to the Lord that He or Miss Vicki would tell me if she had any purpose in marrying me other than the right ones. So I feel like that question was taken care of in prayer beforehand.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know that when you agreed to be married on the Johnny Carson show, many people thought you might be getting married for publicity reasons?

[A] Tiny Tim: I would never use the holy sacrament of marriage for publicity reasons. The good Lord knows what's in the heart, not just the outward appearance. When I gave Miss Vicki her ring on Mr. Carson's show, he asked right out of the blue if we would get married on his show. I thought it was a great idea for several reasons. Mainly, I thought it would save both our families a lot of trouble and expense, so I told him yes. We'd been planning on getting married Christmas Day, but Mr. Carson wasn't going to be doing a show that night and asked if we would mind moving it up to the 17th. Well, I thought that as far as Christ was concerned, it was always Christmas with him, so I agreed; and that's the way it happened. But as far as publicity is concerned, I was shocked that our engagement made the front page of the Daily News. May I also say that the News is the greatest paper in New York, because the print is easy to read and it gets straight to the facts. In all the mass media, people want to see simple words and simple pictures. Life is like that. Why, the greatest invention in history is the safety pin. The second greatest is perforated toilet paper.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to your marriage, you said earlier that you never had an intimate relationship with a woman prior to that. After all those years of self-denial, how did you feel about experiencing intercourse for the first time?

[A] Tiny Tim: First, I'd like to say this. I told Miss Vicki everything about myself, but I didn't know anything about Miss Vicki's past; and to this day, I've tried my best not to question her. Of course, a lot of women might know ten times as much as the men they marry. She knew that I didn't know a thing about S-E-X, but I told her that Christ must come first in our marriage, as he does in everything else. I told her I didn't believe in birth control and that she should be ready to accept a blessed event. So even though I knew nothing about her past, it didn't matter. She fully understood that Christ was the first thing in our marriage and that S-E-X didn't matter.

[Q] Playboy: Did you read anything to acquaint yourself with the basic physical aspects of intercourse?

[A] Tiny Tim: Oh, no, no, no! I followed the writings of Tobias and waited three nights and three days before I touched her. In fact, we spent most of that time in separate rooms. All I did was lie on my bed, and I can tell you I wouldn't want to go through that again. I was getting very, very depressed. She was next door and I didn't know what was going on. I thought she might have gone out to see the Bahamas, but she, too, had stayed in her room the entire time. She was so faithful.

[Q] Playboy: Was your first experience what you expected it to be?

[A] Tiny Tim: It was simply wonderful. Miss Vicki was very understanding and very pleasant. She seemed to be a woman of experience. I can really tell you the honest truth: There was not a single bit of embarrassment on her part or mine. Instead, there was a humility and reverence in the act, because whenever Christ is there and whenever things are done in his name, somehow the way is shown.

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised when you learned that Miss Vicki was pregnant?

[A] Tiny Tim: Since I don't believe in birth control, I would have been surprised if she wasn't. As it is, I'm delighted by it and I hope that after the baby is born in late September or early October, we can settle into some kind of better home in either New York or Los Angeles.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever think about the way you intend to raise your child?

[A] Tiny Tim: We'll just try to do what Christ wants.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any idea what you'll name your first child?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I'm interested in the possibility of using brand names for him or her. Perhaps Crest or V-8.

[Q] Playboy: Do you plan to bring up your child on your own diet of health foods?

[A] Tiny Tim: As soon as it's old enough. As for my own diet, I've been cheating a little lately and eating TV dinners occasionally, but my stomach is very sensitive and I usually stick to apples, bananas, honey and my health cereal, which I refer to as "the Rolls-Royce of cereals." I call it that because it costs 90 cents a box--probably the most expensive cereal in the world. It's called Familia and the ingredients are apple flakes, wheat germ, rolled oats and sugar. It tastes delicious and, believe me, there's a big difference between eating these health cereals and eating commercial cereal. Commercial cereal has chemicals in it and, even though they're listed on the package, I wonder how many people know what they are or what they do.

[A] Margarine is another example. It has artificial color and artificial flavor. Who knows what chemicals go into those colorings and flavorings? Also, packaged fruit on the commercial market has chemicals added. They add ascorbic acid to prunes as a preservative. I really believe that the public is being pleasantly poisoned to death. I've even heard that a hungry rat will not eat packaged white bread because he can smell the chemicals in it. But even natural foods may not be safe anymore. Fruits and vegetables are being sprayed with poisons, and the poisons in the ground are showing up in the fruits and vegetables. I suppose that if you have to eat commercial foods, you should eat things like oranges and bananas, which have a natural protective skin around them. But all this pollution is a shocking crime. There are gases and chemicals in the air, oil slicks, chemical wastes and garbage in the water and poisons in our foods. The people who are responsible for this should get together and find out what to do about it.

[Q] Playboy: Most ecologists feel that they are the ones least likely to lead the drive to clean up our environment.

[A] Tiny Tim: They won't be if the public gets as antagonistic about it as it did over, say, civil rights. I think history will prove that whenever there was a real mass disturbance, people woke up to the problem at hand. Look what happened with cyclamates. The Government found out they were dangerous and made a big enough fuss to get them taken off the market. One thing I'd like to see done in the area of health is a change to plastic eating utensils and paper dishes. I think that a lot of viruses and diseases are being spread because restaurants don't clean their utensils very well before they're served to the consumer. I'd even be in favor of paper sheets and clothes, too, because they'd be disposable and, therefore, more sanitary.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think President Nixon is doing enough to solve these problems?

[A] Tiny Tim: He's been going slowly, but I think he's doing the right thing. I think he's acting very wisely right now. I will say that one of President Nixon's greatest moves was bringing Dr. Billy Graham to the White House. I think the President has a great belief in prayer and that he has acted in a prayerful way.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel as Nixon does about those he believes are trying to foment revolution in this country?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, first let me say that I think we're living in the greatest country in the world. I said that at a press conference in England and it seemed to rub them the wrong way, but I really believe that the good Lord has blessed this country. In other places, the government controls everything; so, as bad as things are over here, I think they're worse overseas. When it comes to revolution, I can't blame people who'd like to change things. A guy who's starving doesn't want to know what's going on at the White House; he wants to know where his next meal is coming from. Also, even though I believe that every man should earn his bread, there sometimes aren't enough jobs to go around. And it isn't easy to live with roaches. But still, everything must be balanced to be right. Man needs law because he's a sinner. A child needs a father because, left to himself, he's in trouble. Without Christ, I'd be in mental and spiritual trouble. Men also need a leader, and that leader has no way to conduct the business of his country in a disciplined way other than by law. If a revolution could help the poor in cleaning up the slums and the skid rows, then that would be fine. But to start a revolution now without those specific goals within reach would be making a free-for-all of it. We've got to be careful to avoid that.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to be very tolerant of all kinds of people and attitudes. Isn't there anyone or anything you really dislike strongly?

[A] Tiny Tim: No one's heart could be as wicked as mine. Many times, I'm filled with hate or even murderous intent. I hate cheating. I hate someone who hikes up prices a penny or two on his neighbors. I hate when the rich get more help than the poor or when an elderly man is beaten up or when a girl is attacked. These are terrible, terrible things. I would give the death penalty to people who steal if they don't have to for survival. I would give a life sentence to a murderer and--I know this sounds crazy--then saw off his fingers one at a time, letting him heal between each time. I believe the murderer should suffer a slow type of death. I know this sounds torturous and cruel, but it is also cruel to kill an old man or to slay a young girl and slice up her body. Most of these people are put into prison or committed to insanity wards, but I don't think they're insane. With our laws, if a man claims insanity, he gets off much easier, but I think perhaps 93 percent of the public is perfectly normal.

[Q] Playboy: Some psychiatrists might take issue with that.

[A] Tiny Tim: I think psychiatry has become a false god that many people try to put on the same plane with Christ. They say it's a cure, but it really isn't, because most of the people who see psychiatrists aren't any happier afterward than they were before. They have no inner peace. They don't know Christ and they don't obey his commandments. Instead of loving their neighbors, they care only about how much money they're going to make or what kind of car they'll buy. They want so much for themselves and give so little to others that they become like clogged faucets. When they finally can't stand it anymore, they decide that they need a psychiatrist, but it's really only through Christ that we can let go of ourselves--and find ourselves.

[Q] Playboy: Many young people have forsaken the kind of material selfishness you're talking about, yet many of their beliefs would seem to violate your own moral code.

[A] Tiny Tim: Everybody condemns those who take drugs, who have long hair, who have free love and who go to political demonstrations, but let's look at our so-called righteous Christians. They have drunken parties in their homes. They say we should love our neighbor, but they live in all-white communities and move out when a black man moves in. They say they don't believe in divorce, but they don't seem to mind going out with other women. Of course, it's wrong to take those terrible drugs--they ruin the body and the mind--but it's just as wrong to be filled with prejudice. As far as I'm concerned, the temporary effect of a drug is nothing compared with the venomous normality of hate, which is found in 99 percent of Christian homes today.

[Q] Playboy: One of the issues central to the underground culture is opposition to the Vietnam war. How do you feel about it?

[A] Tiny Tim: I'm sorry to say this, but I really believe that it may be worth while to shed blood for a good cause. If there had been no riots in the ghettos, the white man might never have awakened to the black man's problems. If there hadn't been a war in 1775, we might still belong to England. I believe that the United States has never been wrong in a war. I think we are in Vietnam because we remember Pearl Harbor and we're trying to see that a thing like that doesn't happen again. Many countries are jealous because we have so much--and maybe we were a little greedy in getting it--but I do believe we have the right to protect what we have.

[Q] Playboy: Even at the cost of incidents such as the massacre at My Lai?

[A] Tiny Tim: That was terrible, terrible. But in a place like Vietnam, you can't tell who's your friend and who's your enemy. Anyone over there may be carrying a weapon of destruction. It's a shame that children have to be there, but don't forget that the Israelites in the Bible killed the children of their enemies. You see, the good Lord knows there is another world coming and what will happen to these children when it comes.

[Q] Playboy: Feeling as you do, have you ever tried to enlist in the Armed Forces?

[A] Tiny Tim: I tried to get in seven times--three times in the Army, and then in the Air Force, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard. They all thought I was putting them on, so they turned me down. The Army recruiter asked me why I wanted to go in and I told him frankly that I wanted to go to the moon. He thought I was seriously disturbed, but I wasn't kidding. My real aim has always been to discover the unknown. Not that I'm brave, but I'm fascinated by other beings and other worlds. I've always wanted to visit outer space, or search underneath the sea, or explore the antarctic--or even find the Abominable Snowman. I believe that there is life on every planet, including the moon. We may not have hit the right spot when we landed there. Or maybe we didn't stay there long enough. Whoever is up there is probably laughing at us. We haven't even scratched the surface up there yet. My greatest unfulfilled ambition is to be one of the astronauts, or even the first singer on the moon.

[Q] Playboy: What else would you like for yourself?

[A] Tiny Tim: Well, I'd like to have a talent show to help some of the great unknown entertainers get a shot at the big time. But most of all, I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single.