Danny Devito's Body (Critical Essay‪)‬

[1] A 1987 profile in Newsweek meditated on the unlikely early success of Danny DeVito in Hollywood: "DeVito has ... becom[e] one of Hollywood's hottest--and most unlikely--success stories. In a town of pretty-boy leading men, he has triumphed despite being typecast as five-foot and fiendish" (Reese, 72). An interviewer for People registered similar surprise: "The odds against a short, balding actor being more sought after than Mel Gibson can make a guy feel like a lucky star" (Stark, 83). A reporter for Time graciously attributed DeVito's success to the liberalism of Hollywood and to DeVito's talent: [2] The incongruity between the insulting tone and the intended praise of DeVito is intriguing, but it is the reporter's dubious argument that I find especially striking. DeVito's talent is undeniable; he has proven his skill as an actor and director in numerous films, including Living Out Loud, Tin Men, Romancing the Stone, Hoffa, Batman Returns, Ruthless People, The War of the Roses, and Get Shorty, to name a few. Talent, however, has rarely been essential to an actor's success in Hollywood. I am suspicious, moreover, of the claim that Hollywood was more inclusive and tolerant in the final decades of the twentieth century. For me, the question remains unanswered. Why did Danny DeVito achieve such success? This essay attempts to answer to that question, focusing on the decades of his greatest fame, the 1980s and 1990s.