Big Time

Though Kansas City is far from the bright lights and star-paved walks of Hollywood, mini film studios dot the sprawling metro. Filled with casting couches, video cameras and backdrops for screen tests, each is essentially the same.

Nielsen Media Research ranks Kansas City as the country's 31st-largest television market. The entertainment production industry here is small but self-sufficient, kept afloat by ad campaigns for local businesses. An actor may land a role in a Hallmark commercial one week and be hawking snack cakes outside a grocery store. An actress may rely on her agent to get reputable gigs but moonlight as a stripper. Kansas City is a town where most would-be actors keep their day -- or night -- jobs.

In a knockoff tinsel town like this, making it big is less about being famous and more about earning enough money to survive. And when you're less than 5 feet tall, chances are, the effort becomes a do-anything hustle not to get overlooked.

Know Your Competition

Wearing slacks and a shirt and tie, Jeffrey White stepped in front of a gray backdrop surrounded by hot lights and TV monitors. The Wright/Laird Casting studio, occupying a film-noir-style suite in the crumbling Congress Building at 36th Street and Broadway, was otherwise sparsely furnished with a video camera and a round, wooden table circled by dark-suited executives, including a casting agent, a director and a costume designer, whose assistants flitted purposefully about. White was in his midforties, but his strong build and bright gaze made him appear much younger. His jaw line cut a sharp angle beneath the lights.

On this day in October 2002, the Missouri Lottery was holding an open casting call for its holiday "Luckytown" commercial. White tried to get into his character. Think: cheerful elf.

White stood 4-feet-7-inches tall. He was both the tallest -- a point of pride -- and the best-known dwarf working in showbiz in the metro.

This particular call had drawn dwarf wanna-be actors from across Missouri, Iowa and Kansas. Less than an hour earlier, in a similarly drab, appreciably hotter room across the hall from the audition studio, White had met some of his competition: a leather-clad biker; a tattooed rocker accompanied by his leggy, blond-haired girlfriend; a thick-limbed bouncer; and a surprisingly old man. He'd talked briefly with a rambunctious kid in his twenties named Chad Alpers, who worked full time as a slot technician at the Ameristar Casino.

Alpers had shown up without a résumé, head shot or illusions of grandeur. He'd done a few gigs himself -- dancing on bars, riding in the St. Patrick's Day parade, working a bachelor party for a couple hundred bucks.

White didn't have much to say to him. Neither dwarf seemed interested in making friends.

"I don't know how they get ahold of these people," White says of local casting agents, recalling the other actors that day. "I don't see them walking around unless we're doing some kind of shtick or spoof."

Having been in the business for more than twenty years, White was already established. He'd started his film career after college at the University of Kansas, sitting inside a giant robot and operating it Power Ranger-style for an industrial film. After college, he'd spent time working behind the scenes for Nick Vedros, a well-known commercial photographer; White later appeared in Vedros' promotional materials as a jockey on a carousel and as a red-suited bellhop in front of a wall of luggage.

In the '80s, White had been a high roller, partying with the suit-and-tie crowd at Skies. Back then, his wife had given him a nickname -- Bean -- that he'd used as a stage name on a few occasions. In the '90s, he'd broken into TV ads playing elves and leprechauns in local commercials. White also accepted rote parts in student films. He'd earned as much as $1,000 a day making cameo appearances in B-movies -- in one, he played a drunk in an oversized sombrero opposite a Penthouse model for a dustup scene at Dave's Stagecoach Inn. "It was called Cabaret-something," he says of that gig. His other movies were "T-and-A flicks," he says. "Skin flicks. I try to forget them when they're done."

On St. Patrick's Day, White would contract to show up at Kelly's and O'Dowd's, then run a side business offering photos of himself posing with partiers for ten bucks a pop. He had a cocky air. He kept his hair cropped short but not too short, his frame muscled but not too thick. He wanted to be able to mold himself to any role. Then, in 1999, White landed a role as an elf in a commercial shoot for Hallmark -- a gig that made him feel as if he'd finally arrived.

Auditioning for the Luckytown commercial at Wright-Laird was a homecoming. Two years earlier, he'd earned his first statewide job, a spot in another lottery commercial. Filmed at the Ward Parkway mall, the ad featured White in three separate scenes: as an elf offering Santa presents, as a short-statured police captain getting mobbed by officers wanting to volunteer as Santa in Luckytown, and as a gift-schlepping extra. White's commercial had run in prime-time slots on multiple stations, giving him big exposure. More important, he started earning residuals -- about $25 each time the commercial aired. His ka-ching factor doubled when the commercial started running back-to-back during all-night movie marathons. White hired an agent, Kathy Hanis with Entertainment Plus Talent. He had banked more than $10,000 from acting work over the previous two years.