[3] Breaking into show business as a trumpet player, House worked in circuses, vaudeville, burlesque theaters and radio dramas before adding the occasional Broadway turn and bit part in feature films to his résumé.

[4] One of his Broadway co-stars, Pauline Moore, once recalled an incident about his performance in the 1933 Earl Carroll version of Murder at the Vanities: He had a heart attack one night, and every minute he wasn't on the stage he was sitting there, the sweat just running off of him.

It is known that his estate memorabilia, which would have included many of his vaudeville routines, did pass into the hands of noted variety theater enthusiast and historian, Milt Larsen.

[7] This material was originally housed at the Society for the Preservation of Variety Arts in the Friday Morning Club building in the 1970s and 1980s, but was subsequently moved to the basement of the Magic Castle in about 1991.

[10] Five years later, Time said of Murder at the Vanities (1933) that House was "as incredibly fat behind as before", while noting that he contributed to the play's "bewildering" conclusion when his character requested "a steak so big you can milk it".

Because White Horse Inn was embraced by the New York press, Billy House received what one scholar of the play called "a big career boost".

House's significant girth[5] made him a natural for the memorable role of Friar Tuck, opposite Alan Hale's Little John in the 1950 film, Rogues of Sherwood Forest.

He is also remembered by scholars of horror films for his "superb" performance as the obese, ambiguously evil Lord Mortimer in Boris Karloff's Bedlam (1946).