Cinema: Tinseltown's Tiny Terror

Offscreen, though, Danny DeVito is a hardworking pussycat

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Starting out was hard. He played the evil lead in a children's theater production of Rapunzel and the Wicked Wizard ("It's widely read in Europe," says droll Danny). He tried Los Angeles ("I couldn't get arrested . . . or an agent") and came back East. But for a while in New York City, there was no house to call home. "I had no money and needed a place to sleep, so I'd ride the Third Avenue bus up to the Bronx, cross the street and ride back down to the Battery. Thanks to the transit authority, I was warm and toasty if I took a backseat, and I felt cloaked and protected by all the people."

His chief cloak and bottle washer was and is Actress Rhea Perlman, whom he met when she visited him backstage in 1970. A few weeks later she moved in. "It wasn't impulse," DeVito insists. "It just made sense. I had an apartment, and she supported me." Perlman, a scrappy 5 ft. 1 in., co-stars as the lonely termagant Carla, a kind of female Louie DePalma, on NBC's Cheers; posed together, Carla and Louie could be figurines on the Grinch's wedding cake. But Rhea and Danny have made better luck. They have lived together for 16 years and were finally married in 1981. "At the ceremony," DeVito says, "we had a recording of Rhea's favorite song, Alfalfa's rendition of I'm in the Mood for Love, taped from an old Our Gang movie." Now that they have two daughters (Lucy, 3, and Gracie, 15 months), they "stand in line for every Disney movie that comes out," says Danny, a little surprised at being a settled family man. "My mother always said that you were better off raising pigs."

For the moment, DeVito is better off playing pigs, like the snarling clothier who wants to get rid of his shrewish wife Bette Midler in Ruthless People. But the little man has bigger plans. He has directed episodes of Taxi and Amazing Stories. He and Perlman have founded New Street Productions to generate their own projects, which would surely expand the range of DeVito roles. "He could take on Edward G. Robinson parts, or even romantic leads," Rhea says. "When people get to know him, they'll see he's capable of anything." One thing: people who get to know him are usually beguiled. Joe Piscopo, who starred with him in Brian DePalma's Wise Guys, calls DeVito "the most likable man ever created by God." When asked how DeVito deals with problems about his height, Piscopo seems perplexed. "Danny short? Is Danny short? I never noticed. I've always looked up to him."

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