Michael Dunn (born Gary Neil Miller; October 20, 1934 – August 30, 1973) was an American actor and singer with dwarfism. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for The Ballad of the Sad Café, and for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Stanley Kramer's Ship of Fools, but is best remembered for a recurring role as mad scientist Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless in the 1960s television adventure series The Wild Wild West. He inspired a number of later actors with dwarfism, including Zelda Rubinstein and Mark Povinelli.
Medical condition Dunn had medical dwarfism, a result of spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia (SED, subtype unknown), a genetic defect of cartilage production caused by a mutation in the COL2A1 (type II collagen) gene. This disorder, classified as a skeletal dysplasia, causes distorted development of the limbs, spine, and ribcage and leads to early, widespread osteoarthritis and constricted lung growth. As an adult, Dunn stood 3′ 10″ and weighed about 78 pounds (117 cm, 35.38 kg). During Dunn's lifetime, his condition was described by the nonspecific term "progressive chondrodystrophy", or alternatively as "achondroplasia", a term that now refers specifically to a skeletal dysplasia caused by a defect in the gene for fibroblast growth factor receptor 3.
Early life Dunn was born Gary Neil Miller in Shattuck, Oklahoma, to Jewell (née Hilly; 1905–1990) and Fred Miller (1906–1981) during the Dust Bowl drought. He chose his stage name to differentiate himself from another Gary Miller in the Screen Actors Guild. "Dunn" was his maternal grandmother's maiden name, but his reason for choosing "Michael" is unknown and not derived from his monastic experience in 1958. An only child, when he was four years old, his family moved to Dearborn, Michigan.Biography, Michael Dunn. Columbia Studios, John C. Flinn, Studio Director of Publicity and Advertising. August 4, 1964.
Dunn started reading at age three, was champion of the 1947 Detroit News Spelling Bee (representing Wallaceville School in Wayne County), and showed early skill at the piano. He enjoyed singing from childhood, loved to draw an impromptu audience (even while waiting for a bus), and developed a pleasing lyric baritone and superb sight-reading skills.Higgins, Robert. "The only thing small about Michael Dunn is his height." TV Guide, July 8, 1967:22–24. His parents defied pressure from school authorities to sequester him in a school for disabled children and staunchly supported his talents, independence, and integration into mainstream society. "I always got thrown out of classes for being too lippy", he commented about his experience with elementary school teachers. "I'd read more than they."Nachman, Gerald. "The tall success of Michael Dunn." New York Post. November 19, 1965. His orthopedic condition greatly limited his mobility, but he swam and ice-skated in childhood and remained a skilled swimmer throughout his life.Bosworth, Patricia. "Just an ordinary guy." The New York Times. September 25, 1966.Weaver, Tom Interview with Phoebe Dorin, 2000
Education Dunn attended Redford High School in Detroit (1947–1951), then entered the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in September 1951, just before his 17th birthday. However, according to his Columbia Studios press kit biography, his studies were interrupted when he was knocked down a flight of stairs during a "student rush", which resulted in a three-month hospital stay.
In 1953, he transferred to the University of Miami, College of Arts and Sciences, which offered a better climate and more accessible campus. His transcript shows that, despite scoring at the 97th percentile of ACE placement exams and the 99th percentile of the CTS English test, he did not distinguish himself academically. However, he was a high spirited and well-known figure about campus who sang in the talent show and facetiously joined the football cheerleading squad. Archives at that university's Otto G. Richter Library show that he became first a copyeditor and a contributing writer, then managing editor in 1954 of the college magazine, Tempo. (Contrary to information that later appeared in his Columbia Studios biography, Dunn could not take credit for Tempo winning the Sigma Delta Chi Award for best college magazine in the country, since credit went to the Editor-in-Chief.) His classmate John Softness recalled, "He could sing like an angel, and he could act and he could write and he was a brilliant raconteur." Softness ran a campus-wide advertising campaign called "Wheels for Gary", which brought in enough money from student donations to buy a used 1951 Austin outfitted with hand controls, so that Dunn could get around independently.
At various points, he held different odd jobs—singing in a nightclub, answering telephones for the Miami Daily News, and working as a hotel detective. ("What a gaff! I got my room free and all I did was play cards with the night clerk and keep an eye open for any funny business in the lobby. Who would ever suspect me of being a detective?") He left college in 1956 after completing only his sophomore year, returned to Michigan, and attended summer classes at the University of Detroit in 1957.
Religion Dunn converted to Catholicism and was baptized in 1954. He was living in Ann Arbor with his parents, working as a professional singer, at the time he entered St. Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit, on February 25, 1958.Miller, Gary Neil: Application for Admission to The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, in the Province of St. Joseph (Provincialate: 1740 Mt. Elliott, Detroit 7, Michigan). July 31, 1957.
According to a Capuchin Provincial Archivist, Dunn entered with the intention of becoming a Capuchin non-ordained Brother. He was known by his given name, Gary, since he never became a novice. A testimonial from John F. Bradley, Catholic Chaplain, University of Michigan, states: "He has always been interested in Catholic activities and was president of the Newman Club in another school". In response to a question on the monastery application asking: "How long have you been thinking of entering religious life?" Dunn wrote, "More than three years." Dunn was later quoted in the New York Post explaining that he had wanted to be of service, since he was unfit for the military: "Everyone my age was going to Korea and I had this feeling that singing wasn't exactly doing my part."
However, monastery records entered by the Master of Novices show that the physical demands of monastic life in a huge, 19th-century building with no elevator proved too strenuous. Dunn left of his own accord on May 8, 1958, to pursue a stage career in New York.
Career In New York, Dunn re-encountered Softness, who volunteered to be his manager. In the early 1960s, he befriended actress Phoebe Dorin when they both had small parts in an off-Broadway show, Two by Saroyan. They began singing together casually after their nighttime performances, sitting on the wall of the fountain opposite the Plaza Hotel, and drew a following. Eventually, on the advice of fellow actor Roddy McDowall, the pair started a nightclub act of songs mixed with conversational patter, titled "Michael Dunn and Phoebe". The act received favorable reviews in Time magazine and The New York Times and ultimately led directly to the pair being cast on the television series The Wild Wild West, a Western spy spoof with elements of historical fiction and science fiction, which debuted in 1965."Actors: Elf's Progress," TIME (magazine), 30 July 1965, p. 54. Retrieved 31 January 2008.
Dunn was probably best known for his recurring role on that series as Dr. Miguelito Loveless, a mad scientist who devised passionately perverse schemes and gadgetry to ensnare Secret Service agents James West and Artemus Gordon (Robert Conrad and Ross Martin). "Miguelito" is the Spanish diminutive of "Michael", equivalent to "Mike" or "Mikey". Dorin played Dr. Loveless's devoted assistant, Antoinette. In each of the six episodes in which they appeared together, the villainous couple tenderly sang a Victorian duet or two, heedless of the mayhem they had created around themselves. According to Dorin, Dunn saved her from drowning during filming of the episode "The Night of the Murderous Spring", plunging underwater to tear her free, when her costume became entangled in machinery used to sink a boat on the set. Dunn appeared as Dr. Loveless 10 times on the series—four times in each of the first two seasons, and one time in each of the remaining two seasons. Health problems prevented him from appearing in more.
Early in the 1965-66 television season Dunn was seen in the pilot episode of the spy spoof Get Smart, where he showed his skill with comic farce as the well-heeled gangster Mr. Big, leader of international crime organization K.A.O.S. (September 18, 1965). Later that year he made his first appearance as Dr. Loveless in "The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth" (October 1, 1965), and portrayed a villain who kidnaps an American cryptographer and offers him to the highest bidder in "The Prisoners of Mr. Sin" episode of Amos Burke: Secret Agent (October 27, 1965).
Dunn appeared as a killer clown in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode "The Wax Men" (5 March 1967), and was featured as Alexander, a courageous court jester, in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren" (November 22, 1968). He also appeared in an episode of Bonanza, "It's a Small World" (January 4, 1970), portraying a recently widowed circus performer trying to start a new life.
In 1963, he received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best supporting actor and was nominated for a 1964 Tony Award, for his performance as Cousin Lymon in Edward Albee's stage adaptation of Carson McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Café. Dunn received an Oscar nomination and the Laurel Award as the best supporting actor for his role as the cynical Karl Glocken in 1965's Ship of Fools, directed by Stanley Kramer).
In 1969, The New York Times drama critic Clive Barnes praised Dunn's portrayal of Antaeus in the tragedy The Inner Journey by British novelist and playwright James Hanley, performed at Lincoln Center: "Michael Dunn as the dwarf is so good that the play may be worth seeing merely for him. Controlled, with his heart turned inward, his mind a pattern of pain, Mr. Dunn's Antaeus deserves all the praise it can be given.""Michael Dunn, 39, the actor, is dead", The New York Times, August 31, 1973.
Between those career highlights, he accepted roles in many pulp horror movies, as well as a role in the 1968 film No Way to Treat a Lady, starring Rod Steiger and George Segal. At the time of his death in 1973, he was in London filming Birgito in The Abdication, directed by Anthony Harvey), starring Peter Finch and Liv Ullmann. Author Günter Grass had already asked him to play in a film adaptation of his novel The Tin Drum, a role that ultimately went to the young David Bennent after Dunn's death.
Personal life Dunn married Joy Talbot, a former model with the John Robert Powers Agency, on December 14, 1966. Newsweek Vol. 68, Iss. 24, (Dec 12, 1966): 96. The couple separated in April 1968 and the marriage ended in divorce soon after.
He was a philanthropist toward children with dwarfism, who would write fan letters to him confiding their loneliness and despair. According to Dorin, Dunn often traveled to visit such children at his own expense, delivering encouragement to them and stern counsel to overly protective parents.