Billy Barty (born William John Bertanzetti; October 25, 1924 – December 23, 2000) was an American actor and activist.
In the early 1970s, he appeared often in a variety of roles in children's TV programs produced by Sid and Marty Krofft.
Barty was born October 25, 1924, in Millsboro, Pennsylvania, the son of Albert Steven and Ellen Cecial Bertanzetti.
Small for his age even then, Barty would impersonate young children alongside brawny authority figures or wild animals, making these threats seem larger by comparison.
Some of his more substantial film roles were as the elf Screwball in Legend; High Aldwin, the village elder, in Willow alongside Warwick Davis, creator of the cosmic key; Gwildor in the 1987 cult classic film Masters of the Universe; and as cameraman Noodles MacIntosh in "Weird Al" Yankovic's UHF.
Beginning in 1958, he played pool hustler Babby, an occasional "information resource", in eight episodes of the Peter Gunn TV series.
He appeared in over a dozen episodes of The Spike Jones Show, performing as a singer, comedian, dancer and impressionist.
The program gave many Los Angeles area children their first opportunity to become familiar with little people, who until then had been rarely seen on the screen except as two-dimensional curiosities.
In June 1978, Barty guest-starred in the final episode of Man from Atlantis titled "Deadly Carnival".
[citation needed] In 1983, Barty supplied the voice for "Figment" in Epcot's Journey Into Imagination dark ride.
Barty appeared on a 1976 episode of Celebrity Bowling paired with Dick Martin, defeating John Schuck and Michael Ansara, 120–118.
[9] In 1990, Barty was sued in small claims court by two of the writers of his cancelled comedy television series Short Ribbs, which aired for 13 weeks in the autumn of 1989 as a local program on KDOC-TV.