Actor Billy Barty Hurt in Festival Scooter Mishap

Billy Barty, the 3-foot-9-inch actor whose career has spanned seven decades, was released from a hospital Saturday after treatment for injuries he received while driving a scooter at the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival, officials said.

Barty, 74, was riding on an outdoor stage about 9:15 p.m. Friday night after a performance when his scooter toppled over and dropped him headfirst onto a concrete set of stairs, festival director Ken Slimmer said. The actor fractured his eye socket.

“One of the wheels came off the scooter and it tipped and he dropped off the stage and hit his head,” Slimmer said.

Barty was treated at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana and released Saturday around 7 p.m., a hospital official said.

The actor was to be honored at the festival’s celebrity parade on Saturday, themed “Strawberry’s Salute to Billy Barty.” Instead, Barty, who has performed in the festival for 15 years, spent the parade in the hospital.

Barty appeared in his first Hollywood feature in 1927 at the age of 3. Since then, he has performed venues ranging from radio to television to Broadway. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he played Mickey Rooney’s kid brother in the “Mickey McGuire” series of comedy shorts.

In his long movie career, Barty played a wizard in the movie “Willow,” a tongue-in-cheek part as a German spy in “Under the Rainbow” with Chevy Chase and a suspected stalker in “Foul Play.”

Active in the cause of advancing the rights of short people, he founded Little People of America, whose 5,000 members are 4-feet-10 or under, and the Billy Barty Foundation, both in 1975.

Two years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan reappointed Barty to the city’s Commission on Disability.