A talent show brought down the house in Danvers at the Little People of America conference, but will short-stature performers ever make the big time?

Robert Van Etten gets a chuckle from his brush with fame as a cast member of the HBO original movie "Lip Service," released in 1988.

A satire about an ambitious TV morning-show host and the fading old pro he's angling to replace, the flick's script called for a dwarf head coach of a basketball team to take a turn on the interview couch. After the first take, Van Etten leaned over and urged the Johnny Carson-type playing the scene with him to change it up a little.

Bold stuff. Especially for an amateur like Van Etten, who stands 3-feet-4-inches and only took the part on a whim, when he heard through the grapevine the professional actor of short stature HBO was counting on couldn't make the shoot.

"He was supposed to be a Johnny Carson-type, but he wasn't playing it like that," explains Van Etten, a 52-year-old engineer from Stuart, Fla., occupying a front-row seat at the Little People of America (LPA) National Conference talent show this week in Danvers. "He closed the scene by shooting a real basketball (into a bin), but I told him, 'Carson wouldn't do that. He'd crumple up his sheet of questions and shoot that.' The guy turned to the director and said, 'Let's try that.'"

The anecdote underscores two realities.

First, Van Etten, like many of his 1,200 fellow audience members at the Sheraton Ferncroft Resort, may be pint-sized, but he owns a power forward's mentality. Next, it appears no combination of political correctness and disability awareness will revolutionize the role of little people in the entertainment industry anytime soon.

The formulas of 1988 - heck, the formulas of 1939 and "The Wizard of Oz" - are largely intact today. Short people get short parts. Need a dwarf, cast a dwarf. Otherwise, out of script, out of mind.

"I do get discriminated against - I can hear people making fun of me when I'm on stage," says Donna Bertsch, a 39-year-old vocalist from Aberdeen, S.D., who stands 3-feet-8-inches and belted out a stirring cover of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" at the LPA talent show. "When I hear that, it just makes me want to show what I'm made of. People don't know what I'm capable of until I open my mouth."

Bertsch works full time for the IRS and runs a karaoke business on the side, but dreams of singing for a living. She can't, she says, in large part because there's no place for a singer whose microphone stand towers above her head.

That's the disconnect. It's not like Bertsch is a Rockette who can't kick. She can sing. She's simply not a singer of average height.

It's a familiar refrain.

Noted dwarfed actor Billy Barty founded the LPA in 1957, but rarely played a part outside the midget mold. Van Etten married an attorney/LPA advocate, but his film credit was as the (snicker, snicker) dwarf coach of a basketball team.

As an industry, stage, music and film boasts a history of affording persons of small stature unique opportunity, but in roles born singularly of their unique birth genes.

For little people, Hollywood giveth, but it giveth by taking away. So, in the 64 four years since Dorothy's munchkins and the 32 since Wonka's Oompa Loompas, has nothing really changed? More to the point, is there any chance typecasting little people will ever be a thing of the past?

The answers are as much of a minefield as the questions.

"I think we've seen changes when you talk about the stereotypical roles offered to people of short stature," says Danvers' Dan Kennedy, a media critic for the Boston Phoenix and author of a forthcoming book, "Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes" (see adjacent story). "There's been much more of an attempt to make improvements and be respectful. At the same time, some of the things out there like the Howard Stern show are as negative as anything that's ever happened for little people."

Kennedy's daughter, 11-year-old Rebecca, was born with achondroplasia, a genetic variation resulting in the most common form of dwarfism.

"Little people are playing more traditional roles instead of clowns or some crazy," agrees Van Etten. "But you've still got stuff like dwarf-tossing going on. We've got a ways to go."

Living in oblivion

About one in 10,000 U.S. births results in a baby with dwarfism: a child with exceptionally short limbs, though often with an average-size head and torso. People born with dwarfism generally don't reach an adult height taller than 4-feet-6-inches and LPA membership is typically extended to folks 4-feet-10-inches and below. (People at the higher end of that spectrum may be people of short stature who aren't dwarves, like 4-foot-9 Oscar winner Linda Hunt.)

Barty founded the organization with about 20 friends and colleagues. Today, the group is a nationwide network of roughly 6,000 families, sponsoring monthly meetings of its 50 chapters and an annual national convention - the 2003 edition being this week's ongoing, eight-day assemblage of about 1,500 members in Danvers.

The LPA publishes a newsletter and maintains an Internet site, helps dwarfed couples adopt babies and provides psychological and social counseling. The LPA is also a political and cultural organization, serving an important advocacy role.

Van Etten's wife, Angela, for example, is a lawyer who's been instrumental in making dwarf-tossing ban legislation state law in New York and Florida.

While LPA membership has been a godsend for thousands, only about 10 percent of the country's little people belong to the organization. Many still live in isolation, shunned as freaks or mental misfits.

"There are no words to describe how important something like this talent show is for people within the little people community," says LPA New England District Director Cindy Trifone, a Connecticut resident and the average-size parent of a teenage daughter, Abby, who was born with achondroplasia. "To be inspired by fellow members and to allow the average-size community to appreciate their talent - I think its especially inspiring for the parents of little people to see their kids' potential and understand there's hope that their situation isn't a negative or a stigma."

Some 80 percent of dwarves are born to parents who the LPA calls people of average height. A fetus conceived by dwarf parents has a 25 percent chance of inheriting the mutated gene from both mother and father, usually resulting in infant death. The child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting one copy of the gene, resulting in dwarfism, and a 25 percent chance of not receiving the mutation from either parent.

In the summer of 1994, geneticists at UCal-Irvine found the gene that causes achondroplasia, responsible for more than half the incidence of dwarfed babies in the U.S. Since then, other types of an estimated 200 forms of dwarfism have been identified and prenatal genetic testing via amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling can be performed. Other types of dwarfism may be identified during ultrasound examination of the fetus.

But as barriers, both medical and societal, continue to crumble, many persist in disenfranchising America's little people. LPA literature preaches "accessibility and mobility." Utterly incongruously, the entertainment industry has served as a double-edged sword for people of short stature.

Plots portraying little people in less stereotypical roles have reached the mainstream with releases like 1996's "Living in Oblivion," starring Steve Buscemi, and smaller indie releases in 2002 like "Cherish," featuring actor of short stature Ricardo Gil, and "Who Shot Victor Fox," as well as prominent TV shows like "Baywatch" and "Seinfeld."

Meredith Eaton, an actress of short stature featured in "Who Shot Victor Fox," was a familiar face on "NYPD Blue" and "Dharma and Greg" before earning a regular role on "Family Law."

But casting to type doesn't evolve overnight.

"We pat ourselves on the back as a society every time we're tolerant, but we are spoon fed image in this culture and that tends to make us look at people as types," says Essex's Peter Berkrot, director of Beverly's New Voices-New Visions theater company, who owns major motion picture credits like "Caddyshack" and "Teacakes or Cannoli." "In much of this business, you have to be pretty to work. This society doesn't have a huge capacity for weaning physical characteristics from personal, spiritual, psychological, emotional characteristics.

"It's going to take a director or screenwriter with courage to start changing things," adds Berkrot, also a corporate communications consultant. "It's going to take another generation or so."

Some of that next generation graced the stage in Danvers this week.

"I think someone like Corin can help be an ambassador for her generation," says Hawaii's Richele Thornburg, as she watches her 7-year-old daughter, born with achondroplasia, perform a hula dance number. "If she can perform and show her talent and help the disability community, that can help acceptance. I've never looked at (her genetic variation) as a negative. We'd support her in anything she wants to pursue and if she has talent for the entertainment industry, we'll encourage it."

Get shorty

Jim Geofreda doesn't pussyfoot his way around short jokes.

In fact, the Rhode Island native's standup comedy act goes at the issue eyeball-to-eyeball. Thanks, as he reminds his audience, "to the staff putting all the little stepstools out around the hotel."

There are a lot of sight-line punch lines.

"The most important thing when you discuss society in this format is to talk about the things that are most true and extreme - they're the funniest," says Geofreda, 32, a father of three attending his 11th LPA conference since his first in 1983, which was also in the Boston area. "Of course, it isn't funny that we're busting it harder at everything we do than most other people because we have to."

The numbers bear that out.

A study published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 1990 reported that men over 6-foot earn starting salaries 12 percent higher than shorter men. According to a story published on dwarfism.org, a Michigan State University study found that people rate tall men more attractive, accomplished, fit and masculine than short men. Respondents in the same study rated tall women as higher-class and more physically attractive than short women.

Data like that is a clear catalyst for some of comedienne Robyn Watson's material at the talent show.

The Wisconsin resident recited a list of "You know you're at an LPA conference when ..." gags, including one with the kicker, "... when you have more boyfriends in one week than you do the rest of the year."

For his part, Geofreda, who also plays guitar and sax as an amateur stage musician and now lives in Maryland, sides with Essex's Berkrot when it comes to speculating about change.

"I think things are different (for little people in entertainment), but it's not changing fast enough," he says. "Writers and directors have to be more creative. I don't believe we'll see an Oscar winner from (the dwarf) community in this generation. Maybe the next one."

Even that kind of gradual pace will require no pussyfooting around.

"Things don't change unless people push and I think little people are beginning to push," says Gloucester's Gwen Cochran Hadden, a consultant in diversity for Beverly's North Shore Music Theater as well as other area corporations and arts organizations. "For little people, the talent is there and it has been. They just have to get out there and compete and that takes organization and advocacy.

"Without pushing, we wouldn't be seeing so many good roles for people of color and people with disabilities," she adds. "In this business, it's not a matter of a fair shake, it's a matter of being visible and a matter of people advocating their involvement."

Which leaves no room for Lip Service.

E-mail reporter Chad Konecky at ckonecky@cnc.com.