The Word Is Out on Shorties--Mr. Five-by-Five Is Now a 10 : Watch Out, Tall, Dark and Handsome . . . the Latest in Male Appreciation Is Toward Short, Cuddly and Roundish

Michael Tucker, a.k.a. Stuart Markowitz on NBC’s “L.A. Law,” was walking down a street in Manhattan recently when a construction worker recognized him from high atop a building.

“Hey, man,” the hard-hat called. “You give us all hope .”

Men are recognizing it. Women are recognizing it. Maybe even Hollywood. So the time has come to officially declare that the short, cuddly man is “in.”

A mere 5-foot-5 in height and a roundish 162 pounds in weight, Tucker is frankly delighted that he’s on the cutting edge of a trend. “I’ve been a little miffed that I wasn’t ever thought of by casting agents to play the leading man roles. I’d sulk,” he admits. “But now all these women are coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, I love you. I love you.’ My reaction depends on whether my wife is there. But generally I say, ‘I love you’ back.”

Tall, dark and handsome Tom Selleck, eat your heart out.

Just ask Susan Camden, a 19-year-old model and Pasadena City College student. This 5-foot-9 model says she’s madly in love with 5-foot-7 1/2 real estate attorney Mark Schwartz “because Mom always said that shorter men were sexier.”

Of course, when she first started dating a shorter man, “I went out and spent $300 on flat shoes because I didn’t want to embarrass him,” she notes. “But Mark took one look at me and said, ‘Darling, I don’t like that look.’ He adores me to wear the highest heels I can find.”

And Erit Siegal, a 30-year-old legal secretary, says her husband Floyd’s 5-foot-6 height is “perfect because I don’t have to strain my neck looking up.”

It doesn’t seem fair that 5-foot-8 is the average height of the American male, but a man is still considered short if he’s that or under. All he has to do is try to buy a suit if he wants proof. “Fashions don’t cater to men who are below 5-foot-9. For years, my customers couldn’t get anything cut for them,” says Fred Gutierrez, manager of Jimmy Au’s Small and Short shop in Beverly Center whose clients include Mel Brooks and Willie Shoemaker and where wardrobe people come to buy outfits for Dudley Moore and Michael J. Fox.

Seen as a Shortcoming

Until recently, many short men have been embarrassed to admit their shortness because they see it as a shortcoming. Gutierrez, for one, has seen men with jacket sleeves hanging around their knees shouting “I’m not short!” as their girlfriends or wives drag them into his store. Nor did Hollywood help matters any because studios used to (and still do, in some cases) fib about an actor’s height if he’s, uh, less than tall.

Gary Schweon, a 5-foot-7 surgeon visiting from Boston, maintains that short men have been “stigmatized” in years past by “being portrayed on TV and in the movies as not being a whole man.” That just isn’t the case, he says. “Because short men don’t have everything, they try harder to succeed with women. They’re always fighting to be seen.” And tall men, like John Paul Knupp, a 6-foot-2 1/2-inch hunk from West Hollywood, can be infuriatingly smug. “I guess you could say I’m bigoted,” Knupp says. “We’re more attractive to women.”

Doesn’t Mince Any Words

Of course, some women still want a man to tower over them, like Lee Ann Shipowick, a 21-year-old Loma Linda University student, who doesn’t mince any words when talking about her 5-foot-6 Canadian friend, Gerald Cherepushak. “I won’t go out with him because he’s too short,” she said while he stood beside her.

“Oh, brother,” he winced.

But those attitudes are changing, it seems. Jeffrey Ullman, president of the Great Expectations video-dating service, did an informal poll of female members recently at The Times’ request. Nearly 75% of the women, whose average age was 35 and who were overwhelmingly interested in a “committed” relationship, were familiar with Michael Tucker’s character on “L.A. Law.” And many said they wouldn’t mind meeting and marrying someone like that. “Certainly a majority of them are more willing to date men who they otherwise would not have dated, or even looked at, before,” Ullman concludes. “And this includes a Stuart Markowitz.”

Ullman found that the women were becoming “much more compromising about the kind of qualities that they really need and really want in a man. And as a result of this introspection process, guys like Stuart Markowitz are more acceptable to them.”

For many, dating a man shorter than they are “was OK, but he must have something extra-special going for him,” Ullman found. Other women thought that men like Stuart Markowitz “had better developed personalities because they haven’t been able to rely on good looks or height so they had to develop their sense of fun.”

These days, short actors are coming out of the closet, so to speak. Michael J. Fox, certainly one of the hottest television and movie actors right now, not only readily divulges that he’s 5-foot-4 but likes to make jokes about it. And one of his biggest idols was Jimmy Cagney whose shortness never got in the way of his becoming one of Hollywood’s leading men of his day. Nor did it seem to bother 5-foot-4 1/2 Alan Ladd’s reputation as a romantic figure.

Dudley Moore, who’s 5-foot-5 as well, seems to have made a career out of being the short and cuddly movie hero. And, in his private life, he helped the image of short men enormously with his long-time relationship with the statuesque Susan Anton.

Michael Tucker, whose girlfriend on “L.A. Law” and wife in real-life Jill Eikenberry has “a good couple of inches on me,” also is helping the cause, he says. The 42-year-old actor admits that he was worried that Stuart “seemed a little nerdy in the beginning. But I had faith that this guy was going to come into his own.”

Now, nearing the end of his first TV season in the role, Tucker confides that he wouldn’t mind being a little more like Stuart in real life. “I’m less secure in myself than Stuart. He’s a little stronger than I am. He seems to know exactly who he is, and I admire that,” Tucker analyzes. “And his love affair with Ann Kelsey shows that people don’t fall in love with a face or a figure. People fall in love with people.”

In one episode dealing with plastic surgery, Tucker got a good laugh out of the fact that “Douglas (a taller, bald character on the show) wanted a toupee, and Ann wanted thinner thighs, but Stuart is the most secure person about his appearance.”

Even so, Tucker is bashful about all the ruckus he and his character are causing among women. “There’s been a wonderful response. People are stopping me in the street all the time. Like it’s inspiring,” he admits. But he doesn’t pick up his fan mail. “I find it a little weird.”

‘Warm and Sensitive’

He gets a kick out of the fact that men also seem to like Stuart. Floyd Siegal, 34, of Encino says he “really” identifies with the character because he, too, is a short lawyer. “He’s warm and sensitive and adorable,” Siegal notes. “But Stuart would be adorable even if he were 6-foot-2.”

So Michael Tucker doesn’t mind giving short, cuddly men some advice. “Be yourself,” he says. “And don’t ever wear elevator shoes or put a corset on.”