Born 50 Years Ago Today: Matthew McGrory, the World’s Tallest Actor

BOTD 50 years ago, Matthew McGrory (1973-2005), certified by the Guinness Book of World Records to have been the tallest professional actor in its annals (7′ 6″). Sadly, as you see, he is not here to share the celebration with us today, as he was felled by the same acromegaly that gave him that extraordinary size. By the time he was in kindergarten he was already five feet tall.

McGrory did not perform in actual sideshows, but he was in two latter day equivalents: the HBO series Carnivale (2003-2005) and trash TV like the shows of Howard Stern,Maury Povitch and Jenny Jones. The West Chester, PA native was featured on those talk shows in the mid ’90s, which led to being cast in rock videos by Marilyn Manson and Iron Maiden, which led to films. He’s a sasquatch in Bubble Boy (2001), an alien in Men in Black II (2002), and an ogre on the tv show Charmed (2003). Rob Zombie cast him as Tiny Firefly in The House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Tim Burton cast in him Big Fish (2003). At the time of his death he was 32.

For more on show business history, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And please stay tuned for my next book Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming November 2023.