The strange, almost unbelievable story
of Robert Scott Carey
began on a very ordinary summer day.
I know this story better than anyone,
because I am Robert Scott Carey.
This is the way to spend a vacation.
I'm thirsty.
That sun feels good.
I'm thirsty.
Interesting.
A cold bottle of beer would taste fine.
Why don't you get it?
Me? Mmm-hmm.
I'm on vacation. All week.
Well, so am I, my friend.
Louise?
I think we should get married.
We've been married for six years.
Really? Mmm-hmm.
Seems like six minutes.
I am not going to get you that beer.
Now I provide the boat, you provide the beer.
Your brother provided the boat.
Okay, I'll make a deal with you.
What?
You get the beer. I'll get the dinner. How's that?
Okay, you got yourself a deal.
To the galley, wench. Fetch me a flagon of beer.
I'm sorry, Captain, but we're all out of flagons this trip.
It'll have to be a can of beer.
Out of flagons! Mmm-hmm.
In the name of heavens, woman, how are we to make the Philippines?
We're not going to the Philippines, sir.
We're going home at the end of the week.
Mutiny!
Make them cold.
Like ice.
Scott, what was that?
I don't know, some kind of mist.
Look at your chest.
But then, on an equally ordinary day,
six months later...
Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Mrs. Carey.
Looks like a nice day, huh?
See you tomorrow.
Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.
Come on, Butch. That's a boy!
There you go.
Scott! Scott, are you dressed yet?
I'll be right there.
All right.
Lou!
Yes, dear?
Honey, are you sure you got the right pants back from the cleaner's?
Just a second.
You asked the same question yesterday morning.
Well, they still don't fit right.
Are they still too loose?
Sure. Even the cuffs are dragging.
Gee, they do look kind of big.
You better talk to that cleaner's.
I don't know what he's doing, but tell him to cut it out.
You're probably just losing weight.
And it's very becoming, so don't complain.
You want one or two eggs?
One.
One? Now, that's why your pants don't fit.
Lou!
Yeah?
Hey, for the love of Pete, the shirt doesn't fit either.
Well, it's your shirt, honey. It's got your monogram on it.
Well, what's that supposed... Now, come on and sit down
and eat your breakfast, and forget about it.
Gee, I know a lot of people who'd like to lose a little weight.
What's your secret?
Maybe, it's the cooking around here.
Well, thanks a lot. Drink your orange juice.
Lou, do me a favor.
What, honey?
Pick up a bathroom scale today.
All right.
Still get 5'11", Mr. Carey.
I've been 6'1" since I was 17.
What's the weight?
Still 174 and a quarter pounds.
I don't understand it.
That's a loss of almost 10 pounds.
Well, I told you, Mr. Carey, you're probably overworking yourself.
You told me that when you overwork
you get nervous and tend to lose weight.
Yes, but I've never lost that much weight.
Besides, I haven't been particularly nervous lately.
Anyway, not eating wouldn't make me lose height, would it?
I very much doubt if you've been losing height, Mr. Carey.
Why don't you put your things on?
You told me that you've been 6'1" since you were 17 years old?
That's right.
How many physical examinations have you had since then?
At the draft board.
In the Navy, and a life insurance physical.
That's not too many, is it?
And it's quite possible there might have been errors
made in all of them as regards your height.
That very often happens.
There are a number of things that could cause such errors.
For example, if you stood erect,
you'd measure out as taller than you actually are,
or if your height was taken in the morning,
you'd measure out as taller.
Why is that?
Because people actually decrease in height during the day.
You see, the body weight compresses the spinal disks,
the bone joints, and so on.
I see.
Two inches, Doctor?
Well, I wouldn't worry about it, Mr. Carey.
As far as I can see, you're in perfect health.
You've likely lost a little weight, due to an insufficient diet,
but people don't get shorter, Mr. Carey.
They just don't get shorter.
What'd Charlie think about your idea for the newspaper ad?
Huh?
He thinks it has possibilities.
Well?
Four pounds. Up or down?
Down.
Well, that does it, my boy. You're going to start taking vitamins.
I'm gonna get you so fat on ice cream and cake,
you'll think you're living in a child's paradise.
I don't think that's gonna fix it, Lou.
Well, then, we'll go and see a doctor, honey.
You're due for a check up, anyway.
I've already seen a doctor.
When? A week ago.
Well, honey, why didn't you say something about it?
Come here, Louise.
Kiss me.
You think that's gonna fix it, huh?
You didn't have to stretch.
You used to stand on your toes when you did that.
Why, in your stocking feet?
I'm getting smaller, Lou, every day.
Well, that's silly, honey. People just don't get smaller.
Yeah. Yeah, you're right.
We'll go back to the doctor tomorrow.
I'm sure he's got a pill for it.
Don't worry, Butch. Everything's gonna be all right.
Go to bed.
Well, that's the last of them, Mr. Carey.
This has been a long week, Dr. Bramson.
I must've worn out your machine.
I needed two full sets of pictures, spaced several days apart.
I had to compare them before I...
Before I could be sure.
Sure of what, Doctor? What is it?
Relax, Doctor. You can't tell me anything I haven't imagined.
You are getting smaller.
I don't profess to understand it, Mr. Carey.
There's no medical precedent for what's happening to you.
I simply know that you're getting smaller.
The X-rays prove it beyond any doubt.
But that's impossible.
That's what we've always believed, Mrs. Carey.
I'm going to send you to the California Medical Research Institute.
If there is an explanation for your phenomenon,
why, they'll find it.
Then began a series of intensive tests.
I drank a barium solution
and stood behind a fluoroscope screen.
They gave me radioactive iodine,
and an examination with a Geiger counter.
I had electrodes fastened to my head.
Water restriction tests. Protein bond tests.
Eye tests. Blood cultures. X- rays and more X-rays.
Tests. Endless tests.
And then one day in the third week,
the final examination.
A paper chromatography test.
Now, don't be despondent, Mr. Carey.
At least we've found out what is happening to you,
gradual loss of nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus.
This test may tell us why.
I hope so.
I think the strip should be dry by now.
We should find phospholipid, amino acids,
cholesterol, creatinine and protein.
These are the elements most commonly found on this strip.
Wait a minute.
This one doesn't belong.
It certainly doesn't belong. Here, take a look.
Our analysis shows that it's a rearrangement
of the molecular structure of the cells in your body.
You mean like a cancer?
No.
No, more like an anti-cancer,
causing a diminution of all the organs proportionately.
Then you know what's causing me to get smaller.
We think we do, Mr. Carey. That's why I asked you here.
Now, I want you to tell me something.
Have you ever been accidentally exposed to any kind of germ spray?
In particular, an insecticide?
A great deal of insecticide?
Insecticide?
Exactly.
Has there ever been a time when you were so exposed?
Do you remember that day I came home and told you about the truck?
Yes, about two months ago.
I was on my way to the store through a back alley.
As I was walking a truck turned in. It was spraying trees.
Do you think that's what's causing me to...
No, that was only the beginning.
You see, something happened to that insecticide
after it was in your system.
Something fantastic and unprecedented.
Something which, in layman's terms, so affected the insecticide
that from a mildly virulent germ spray,
it created deadly chemical reversal of the growth process.
Have you been exposed to any type of radioactivity
in the past six months?
Oh, no. Of course not.
I don't come in contact with anything like that.
I work in an advertising... Scott, wait a minute!
That day we were on the boat.
The boat?
Charlie's boat. Remember?
Well, yes, I remember, but...
The mist.
That mist.
Do you want me to drive, honey?
No, I'm all right.
Louise,
I want you to start thinking about us,
our marriage.
Some awful things might happen.
There's a limit to your obligation.
Now, wait a minute.
Look, I love you.
Don't you know that?
You love Scott Carey.
He has a size and a shape and a way of thinking.
All that's changing now.
Not a darned thing's changed. I know I haven't.
When I married you, I meant what I said.
And as long as you've got this wedding ring on,
you've got me.
Come on now, let's go home, huh?
The truth is, I just lost the Bannister account.
You know how big that account was. Probably 40% of my income.
Well, it's gone now,
and I just can't afford to send you your pay checks anymore.
You've done everything that a brother possibly could do.
Look, I don't like to say this,
but, well, there've been some reporters over at the plant.
Looks like somebody at the medical center talked about you.
I told them there was nothing in it,
but one of the reporters stayed behind.
He was from the American Press Syndicate.
He said they might pay for the story if it's true.
Scott, the story's going to break anyway eventually.
So, whether you make them pay or not,
they're going to make the most of it,
so make them pay.
No, Charlie.
Well, think about it.
All right. I'll think about it.
But really, was there any choice?
We owed a great deal of money, and I had no job.
There was no choice. None at all.
And so I became famous.
And still Robert Scott Carey,
known to a nation as the Incredible Shrinking Man,
keeps getting smaller.
How long will this phenomenon continue?
I want to apply for an unlisted line, please.
Top research men at the California Medical Research Institute...
This is a special case.
... are still searching for an anti-toxin...
My name is Louise Carey. My husband...
Carey. C-A-R-E-Y.
No one knows.
Now, look, we've got to have an unlisted line.
That's all there is to it.
I talked to you yesterday.
Has he come out yet?
How big is he now?
Have you seen him?
He's gotta come out some time. Let's wait.
Have they taken a movie of him?
What's the television truck doing here?
We return you now to Magic Melodies.
Yes, thank you very much.
Scott?
Scott, I've...
I've canceled our phone.
What?
I said, I've canceled our phone.
They're gonna try to get us an unlisted line some time next week.
What do you mean, "They're gonna try"?
Why, they're just gonna try, honey.
There are a lot of people waiting for unlisted lines.
Didn't you tell them who you're married to?
The Incredible Scott Carey? The shrinking freak?
Scott, don't. Use your influence, Louise.
I'm a big man. I'm famous.
Please don't.
Those reporters out there. Why don't you tell them about it?
Give them a new angle for their papers.
Or will I save it for my book?
Yeah, that's what I'll do.
A whole chapter devoted to telephones
and one more joke for the world to laugh at!
Scott, people know.
They realize, they're not laughing at you.
They're not? No.
Why not? It's funny, isn't it?
But it is.
See how funny I am? The child that looks like a man.
Go on, laugh, Louise. Be like everyone else. It's all right.
Well, why can't you look at me?
Look at me!
Don't, Scott!
If they'd just let us alone.
If they'd just let us alone!
Lou, honey. I'm sorry.
I must be losing my mind, talking to you like this.
No, honey. I'm all right.
I know what you must be suffering.
Do you?
Yes, I guess it's been a nightmare for you, too.
Maybe we've forgotten how to hope.
But, Scott, there's so much to hope for.
Any day now the doctors say they may find the anti-toxin.
Sure.
Lou, let's get out of this place before we both go crazy.
Somewhere where nobody can find us.
All right, Scott. I'll look for something.
And try...
Try not to worry.
No, I'll let the doctors worry.
I'm two days behind on my book.
October 17th.
Height, 36 and a half inches.
Weight, 52 pounds.
We haven't been able to find a new house,
and there still is no privacy, no relief,
and no word from the Medical Center.
I fear that what life remains to me...
Hello. Yes, this is Carey.
Louise!
Yes, Scott.
The anti-toxin! They've found it.
Oh, Scott.
Are you sure?
Dr. Silver wants us down there. Right away.
There's something you both must understand.
We're working with unknown factors.
Nothing is guaranteed.
We're 50% sure this will be effective.
For the other 50%, we'll just have to pray.
How long before we'll know?
Mr. Carey will remain here under observation for a week.
We should have the answer by then.
Are you ready?
Ready.
Weight, 52 pounds.
Height, 36 and a half inches.
What was last week's reading?
Weight, 52 pounds. Height, 36 and a half inches.
No change, Doctor.
It's all over, Scott. You're gonna be all right.
How long will it take, Dr. Silver,
to be normal again?
You can put on your robe now.
That will be all, Miss Maltby.
Mr. Carey, we seem to have checked
the degenerative process of your disease.
We've won that much.
At this moment the growth capacity of your body
is as limited as any adult's.
Whether or not you'll grow again is another question.
To help you, we face a whole new set of problems.
Then I'll spend the rest of my life like this?
Mr. Carey, I assure you, we'll go on working.
Every day we'll push our knowledge further,
until, one day, we might have the whole answer.
Thank you, Doctor.
My relationships with the world had ceased with everyone,
except my wife.
And I knew I was driving Lou from me,
but burning inside,
adding its own hideous pressure to everything else,
was my desperate need for her.
Do you want the paper, Scott?
No. No, thank you.
Well, I think I'll turn in.
Come on. There.
Coming to bed?
Yeah, soon.
Well, good night, then.
Good night, Louise.
I felt puny and absurd.
A ludicrous midget.
Easy enough to talk of soul and spirit and essential worth.
But not when you're three feet tall.
I loathed myself, our home,
the caricature my life with Lou had become.
I had to get out.
I had to get away.
For the first time since it happened, I ran into the night, alone.
Hurry, hurry, hurry! Here it is, folks.
The greatest show on the midway.
Come on in and see all the freaks and curiosities.
See Dolly Dumpling, the Fat Lady.
She weighs 840 pounds.
When she sits down she shakes and quivers
like a bowl of jelly on a cold and frosty morning.
See Flamo! Flamo, the fire-eater.
Here is one of the greatest attractions
you will ever see in your born days!
You will remember these sights for the rest of your natural life!
Time for the big show!
I would like you to meet a few of the exhibits here on the platform!
And first we have Tiny Tina!
Here she is!
Thirty-six and a half inches of feminine pulchritude!
You'll see freaks and curiosities
assembled from every part of the globe!
The most unusual apparitions assembled under this tent,
contrived by a tricky Mother Nature!
Here they are in all their glory!
This exhibit is not only entertaining...
Hurry, hurry, hurry! Here it is folks.
One of the greatest shows on the midway.
Come on in and see all the freaks and curiosities.
See Dolly Dumpling, the Fat Lady.
She weighs 840 pounds.
When she sits down she shakes and quivers
like a bowl of jelly on a cold and frosty morning.
See Flamo! Flamo the...
Hello.
Mind if I sit down?
No, please do.
Don't be late, Clarice.
I won't.
Hi.
Pass me the sugar, huh?
Oh, sure.
I haven't seen you here before. You coming with the carnival?
Oh, no, I... No.
Just visiting then, huh?
Yeah.
I'm Clarice Bruce.
My name's Scott Carey.
Hi, Scott.
Scott Carey?
Look, look, I'm sorry.
Maybe you don't want any company.
No, don't go. I want you to stay.
Talk to me.
All right.
How do you live with it, Miss Bruce?
What do you do?
I was born a midget. It's the way I grew up.
I know what's happened to you and, well, that's different.
Different?
That's another way of saying "alone," isn't it?
But you're not alone now.
Still, it must be hard to forget the way things were.
Yeah. I'd like to burn it out of my mind.
Maybe the best way to begin is to start thinking about the future.
A future? In a world of giants?
I've lived with them all my life.
Scott, for people like you and me,
the world can be a wonderful place.
The sky is as blue as it is for the giants,
the friends are as warm.
I wish I could believe that.
You've got to believe that, don't you?
Yeah.
Give me time, Clarice. I'll learn.
I'll be late for my show.
Look. Can I see you again?
If you like.
I would.
You know, Scott, you're taller than I am.
May I?
Thank you.
That night I got a grip on life again.
I went back to work on my book.
It absorbed me completely.
I was telling the world of my experience.
And with the telling,
it became easier.
I think it's just fine, Scott.
Do you really think so? I'm not much of a writer.
Just trying to tell what it's like.
Clarice, you don't know what it's meant to me,
meeting someone like you, someone who understands.
But you're so much better now, Scott.
Thanks to you.
Not to me. Yourself.
You've just stopped running, that's all.
All I know is, I can wake up in the morning
and want to live again.
Actually want to live.
It's a funny thing. Sometimes when I'm working,
I begin to think it's the world that's changed,
that I'm the normal one.
Well, that sounds like a good thing.
Everybody out of step but you and me.
Come on, I'll buy you a drink.
We can talk about another chapter.
What is it, Scott?
Two weeks ago I was taller than you.
You said so yourself.
Well, yes, I remember, but...
Well, can't you see?
I'm shorter now.
Oh, Scott.
It's starting again. It's starting.
It's starting again!
Scott?
Scott, are you in there?
Do you have to make such a racket?
I told you what happens in there.
I'm sorry, Scott. I try to be careful.
Are you going out?
Well, yes, for a little while.
Where?
Well, just to the corner. To the store.
You'll come right back?
Well, of course I will.
Now look, why don't you try to get some rest?
You know Dr. Silver wants to see you again tomorrow.
All right. Go ahead. Be sure the doors are locked.
Every day it was worse.
Every day a little smaller.
And everyday I became more tyrannical,
more monstrous in my domination of Louise.
Heaven knows how she lived through those weeks.
Only I had the power to release her,
if I could find the courage to end my wretched existence.
But each day I thought, "Perhaps tomorrow.
"Tomorrow the doctors will save me. "
Scott!
No. No.
No.
Oh, Scott.
Scott.
...drew deafening applause when he announced that,
if elected, he will do everything in his power
to reduce taxes.
From Los Angeles today, a tragic story,
the passing of Robert Scott Carey.
The report of the death of the so-called Shrinking Man
comes from his brother.
Carey's death was the result of an attack
by a common house cat, a former pet in the Carey home.
Carey was the victim of the most fantastic ailment
in the annals of medicine.
Thus ends the life of a man whose courage and will to survive
lasted until the very end.
A man whose fantastic story
was known to virtually every man,
woman and child in the civilized world.
Mr. Carey. Yes?
Now for the sports...
You may go up now. She wants to see you.
Is she all right? Barely resting.
The doctor gave her a heavy sedative,
but it's hardly working at all.
I see.
I'll get that prescription filled. I'll be back in a minute.
Fine.
My return to consciousness was a plunge into a new level of pain.
I realized I had fallen into a box.
Its walls enclosed me like some gigantic pit.
I had to escape out of the box.
Somehow I had to reach Louise to survive.
The stairs stretched above me, as far as I could see,
cliff rising upon cliff.
I knew I could never scale them.
Louise!
The cellar! Look in the cellar!
Louise, please look for me! Louise!
Eventually, Louise would come to the cellar.
Until then, I had to keep myself alive
with whatever resources I could discover in my basement universe
and in myself.
The cellar floor stretched before me like some vast, primeval plain,
empty of life,
littered with the relics of a vanished race.
No desert-island castaway ever faced so bleak a prospect.
I had discovered a water supply
and even a dwelling place.
Now, the search for food.
I knew my ill-fitting clothes
were unsuited to the exertions that lay before me.
You can't stay here, Louise. Not now.
I don't know, Charlie. I don't know what I want to do.
Lou, let me help you.
You can stay with us, but just get out of here.
If I could just be sure.
Charlie, maybe he's hurt someplace. Maybe he's lost.
We've looked everywhere. He's dead.
I'm his own brother.
I wouldn't say a thing like that if I wasn't sure.
You saw the cat. All right. All right.
Charlie, have you thought how horrible it must have been?
I just keep thinking that he needed me
and I wasn't there.
I wasn't there. Louise.
You've got to get it out of your mind.
I'll never get it out of my mind.
I'll talk to the real estate people.
I never doubted that sometime Louise would come.
I couldn't allow myself to doubt.
I had only to exist,
to search out enough food to sustain me.
I was driven by hunger,
and also by the horrible thought that without nourishment
the shrinking process was quickening.
I was weak and faint.
Yet I knew in order to exist, I must eat.
The food was still a long climb ahead of me.
But now, stretching endlessly before me,
I found a deep abyss.
It was only a box and the space between,
yet to me it was the Grand Canyon and the Mammoth Caves combined.
Deep,
dark,
mysterious and dangerous.
There was no possible way to cross.
No matter how inventive,
how resourceful I thought myself,
this time,
in sight of my goal, it seemed as if I must meet defeat.
Suddenly, I saw an opportunity.
If I could move the stick to the other side...
I cursed myself.
If only I were a little bigger, a little stronger.
I realized there was just this one chance,
and I had no choice.
I had to take it.
If I could leap from the paint stick
and reach the other side.
But there was no time to think,
only to act.
My prison.
Almost as far as I could see,
a gray, friendless area
of space and time.
And I resolved
that as man had dominated the world of the sun,
so I would dominate my world.
In my hunt for food,
I had become the hunted.
This time I survived.
But I was no longer alone in my universe.
I had an enemy,
the most terrifying ever beheld by human eyes.
Charlie, there's a small trunk that I'd like to take with me,
if you don't mind.
It's in the basement. I'll show you where.
All right, I'd better put these in the car first.
All right.
Oh, no. It's flooded.
- It's the water heater. - I'd better have a look.
This is terrible.
I'll turn the water off.
Louise, look for me. Louise!
Charlie! Charlie, I'm here!
Charlie! Louise!
The water! Here in the water!
Charlie!
I smell gas. Is that pilot off?
I'll turn it off.
Louise! Listen to me! Louise!
Louise! Hear me, please! Please!
Can you fix it?
There.
I'll get a plumber down here tomorrow.
Charlie!
Where's your drain?
Well, it's right about there. It must be clogged.
Charlie, look for me!
Is that the trunk, Louise?
Oh, yes, Charlie. But don't bother about it.
It's so wet, I'll pick it up later.
It's okay.
I want you packed and out of this house tonight.
Is that everything, Louise?
Yes, that's everything.
I still had my weapons.
With these bits of metal I was a man again.
If I was to die, it would not be as a helpless insect
in the jaws of the spider monster.
A strange calm possessed me.
I thought more clearly than I had ever thought before,
as if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light.
I recognized that part of my illness
was rooted in hunger,
and I remembered the food on the shelf.
The cake threaded with the spider web.
I no longer felt hatred for the spider.
Like myself, it struggled blindly for the means to live.
If I was to fight it, if I was to win the food,
then it must be now, while strength remained,
while I was still of sufficient size to scale the wall.
It was not decision that drove me to the crate,
but reflex, as instinctive as the spider's.
My legs trembled, not with fear,
but weakness.
Yet somehow I felt within myself a new source of power,
a giant strength, urging me to the death-struggle.
My enemy seemed immortal.
More than a spider.
It was every unknown terror in the world,
every fear fused into one hideous, night-black horror.
Still, whatever else had happened,
my brain was a man's brain,
my intelligence still a man's intelligence.
An idea came to me.
The scissors.
Too heavy for me to employ as a weapon,
they might have another use.
If I could impale the monster with my hook,
fastened by a line to the scissors,
then push the scissors off the ledge...
Whatever the risk,
it was worth a try.
I knew sooner or later
it would come charging down that web,
skimming out blackly toward me.
One of us had to die.
Come on down.
Come on, you devil! I'm waiting for you! Come on!
This was the prize I had won.
I approached it in an ecstasy of elation.
I had conquered.
I lived.
But even as I touched the dry, flaking crumbs of nourishment,
it was as if my body had ceased to exist.
There was no hunger.
No longer the terrible fear of shrinking.
Again I had the sensation of instinct,
of each movement,
each thought tuned to some great directing force.
I was continuing to shrink.
To become what?
The infinitesimal?
What was I?
Still a human being?
Or was I the man of the future?
If there were other bursts of radiation,
other clouds drifting across seas and continents,
would other beings follow me into this vast new world?
So close, the infinitesimal and the infinite.
But, suddenly I knew they were really the two ends
of the same concept.
The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast
eventually meet,
like the closing of a gigantic circle.
I looked up,
as if somehow I would grasp the heavens.
The universe. Worlds beyond number.
God's silver tapestry spread across the night.
And in that moment,
I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite.
I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension.
I had presumed upon nature.
That existence begins and ends
is man's conception, not nature's.
And I felt my body dwindling,
melting,
becoming nothing.
My fears melted away,
and in their place came acceptance.
All this vast majesty of creation,
it had to mean something.
And then I meant something, too.
Yes, smaller than the smallest,
I meant something, too.
To God there is no zero.
I still exist.