Zelda Rubinstein

It’s so infuriating that Zelda Rubinstein was one of the few celebrities willing to sacrifice her career to push for AIDS awareness back in the ‘80s. I’m not going to go through and name names, but there were a lot of much bigger stars who owed their careers in no small part to the queer community who were perfectly willing to stay silent. At least one of the, then at the height of her box office career, was willing to make an AIDS joke in a movie. Meanwhile Rubinstein stood up for the people she cared about. To all 4’3” of her height.

It is often the case that, when we see people whose parents were Jewish and came to the US in the early decades of the twentieth century, we know that the person is lucky to be alive. How much more so in the case of Rubinstein. Her parents were Polish Jews. She was born in Pittsburgh in 1933. She had an anterior pituitary gland deficiency, and the resultant physical condition made her childhood extremely difficult. It’s obvious Rubinstein was smart—she got a BA in bacteriology and worked as a lab tech before going into acting—but she was always aware people assumed she was not.

Frankly, her first movie, Americathon, sounds absolutely dire. The US has to hold a telethon to keep from being repossessed by “wealthy Native Americans,” according to IMDb, but I bet me a shiny new nickel that’s not the term the movie uses. I wouldn’t be shocked to discover it’s got slurs in it. But it also has one of those ‘70s casts full of people who have definitely not been in my kitchen, from Harvey Korman to Elvis Costello, from Chief Dan George to Jay Leno. Her next movie, Under the Rainbow, starred Chevy Chase and cocaine-years Carrie Fisher and is almost certainly extremely similar in most ways, including cast. (Mako! Eve Arden! Twink Caplan!) It’s often listed as her debut, but Americathon was two years earlier.

Apparently Spielberg was specifically looking for a little person for Poltergeist. I don’t know why, but that’s what my research says. Anyway, Rubinstein was cast, and a long and strange career was launched. She’d be the first to tell you it’s because there were not a lot of roles for people of her stature, especially women, especially if it didn’t involve being in some sort of animal or alien suit. I’m frankly shocked she wasn’t in Willow, but perhaps it conflicted with the filming of Poltergeist III. Still, for decades, she worked consistently at least, including roles—like Darkwing Duck as his mother—that didn’t rely on her height in any way.

She seems, honestly, to have been a pretty cool lady. In addition to her AIDS advocacy, she worked to advocate for little people. She started a theatre company called the Michael Dunn Memorial Repertory Theatre, where the tallest performer was 4’6”. (It was named after the actor who played Miguelito Loveless on The Wild Wild West.) She attended the first AIDS Walk in LA. She was smart and funny and talented, and she cared about other people. That’s the kind of person we love talking about around here.