Was there any entertainer as delightfully strange as Tiny Tim? The scraggly-haired crooner shocked audiences way back in the 1960s, and a listen to his yodeling, unhinged vocals is baffling even now.

John von Sydow’s rich, perceptive biography traces the singer’s miserable beginnings as Herbert Butros Khoury, the lonely son of mismatched immigrant parents in New York’s Washington Heights. From childhood, young Herbert suffered from self-reproof, mild religious mania, and romantic delusions of omnipotence. Rudimentary but vivid animation brings his conflicted inner life into view. In time, Herbert selected a new name, picked up on the 1960s free-spirit vibe of Greenwich Village, and began busking, performing, and then recording. Yoko One and the late Jonas Mekas are on hand to describe the Tiny Tim experience, the latter still sounding a little bewildered: “That voice is not from here!”

Tiny Tim’s campy but vulnerable performances of daffy tunes like “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” somehow struck a chord in Middle America. Soon he was making the celebrity rounds on Johnny Carson and the variety shows. In a forerunner of reality TV, he even got married on The Tonight Show before an audience of 40 million. But audiences soon moved on from Tiny Tim, and a long, sad downward spiral began, involving brushes with the Mafia, tours with the circus, and a move back in with his mother before his death in 1996.

Tiny Tim’s story bears a lot of (cautionary) relevance to modern celebrity, and his (tame) gender-bending invites a lot of contemporary commentary. Even his ukulele has made a comeback. But von Sydow holds back from overinterpretation and allows well-selected archival footage, Tim’s diaries, and interviews with those who loved him to tell the story. It’s an artful yet unadorned approach that suits an entertainer so kooky and yet so uncannily real.

This review was originally published in a roundup of DOC NYC 2020.