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Billy Curtis

Billy Curtis

Birthday: 1909-06-27 | Place of Birth: Springfield, Massachusetts, USA

Billy Curtis (June 27, 1909 - November 9, 1988) was an American film and television actor. He was a dwarf who had a 50-year career in a variety of roles. He was born on 27 June 1909 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and died November 9, 1988 in Dayton, Nevada, of a heart attack. According to the IMDb site, his birth name was Luigi Curto, and his height was 4 feet 2 inches (1.27 m). The bulk of his work was in the western and science fiction genres. One of his early jobs was as one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. He also appeared in Adventures of Superman in the 1950s. Most notably, Curtis worked in westerns, including the Clint Eastwood feature, High Plains Drifter in which he featured as Mordecai, a friendly dwarf sympathetic to Eastwood, he also appeared in the 1938 Musical/Western The Terror of Tiny Town. This film is, as far as is known, the world's only Western with an all-dwarf cast. Many of the actors in Tinytown were part of a performing troupe called Singer's Midgets, who also played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939. He also had a starring role in American International Pictures' 1973 release, Little Cigars, about a gang of "midgets" on a crime spree.

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

1978
Loose Shoes

as    Menchkin

1973
High Plains Drifter

as    Mordecai

1973
Little Cigars

as    Slick Bender

1966
Out of Sight

as    The Man From F.L.U.S.H.

1958
The Adventures of Super Pup

as    Super Pup / Bark Bent

1955
Jungle Moon Men

as    Damu

1948
April Showers

as    Capt. Rudolph L. Nemo

1942
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp!

as    Midget

1941
Emergency Landing

as    Judge

1939
Three Texas Steers

as    Hercules - the Midget

1938
The Terror of Tiny Town

as    The Hero (Buck Lawson)