It’s the Screen That Got Small : Do all those cracks about TV bother Gene Wilder, Dudley Moore and Martin Short? Well, now that you ask, let them explain it all to you.

In Hollywood, size counts. Whether budgets, box-office receipts, parties or pools, bigger is inevitably considered better. That being the case, the town’s greatest honors, adulations and compensations are offered to the stars of the biggest screen. Movie actors are the most luminous in Hollywood’s star system; television performers may be admired but for the most part are . . . well, smaller points of light.

So what are Martin Short, Dudley Moore and Gene Wilder, who have built big careers for themselves by getting big laughs in big movies, doing on small-screen sitcoms this fall?

Part of the answer is that none of them has had a big film lately. Television is offering them a chance to work. But more than that, television is offering them a chance to do a kind of work that the movies don’t. And that combination, they say, is worth suffering any gibes about a perceived demotion in the Hollywood pecking order.

“A well-known producer of epics saw me in a restaurant and asked what I was doing,” Wilder recalled the other day. “I said I was doing a television series and he said ‘Television?’ in a very negative way. Truth is, 10 years ago I would have thought the same thing.

“But times are different now. Who today would make ‘The Producers’ or ‘Blazing Saddles’? A studio executive today might not be able to leave the script to ‘Young Frankenstein’ alone--he’d want to pump it up with special effects. And I don’t think anyone wants to do the kind of films I was making (as writer and director)--’The World’s Greatest Lover’ or ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother’--because those were small, sweet little comedies that wouldn’t make $100 million for anybody. I feel I’m doing now what we used to do in the films, but it’s a little shorter. We’re doing 22 minutes and 45 seconds of a nice comedy story.”

“Something Wilder,” in which Wilder plays the father of 4-year-old twins, premieres on NBC on Oct. 1. Short, whose features range from the well-received “Innerspace” and “Three Amigos” to the more recent commercial duds “Pure Luck” and “Clifford,” stars in “The Martin Short Show” for NBC on Tuesdays. And Moore, best remembered for his Academy Award-nominated role as the soused aristocrat in “Arthur,” and as a lust-crazed songwriter in pursuit of Bo Derek in “10,” turns up Wednesday as the father of three daughters in CBS’ “Daddy’s Girls.”

Charles Joffe, a longtime comedy manager and producer who has worked with Short and Moore, doesn’t believe these efforts represent career downgrading. “I don’t think it’s a measure of success one way or the other these days,” he maintains. “Film and television are intertwined now. Marty is a product of television, Dudley came from the stage, and Gene came from the theater. They’ve all done some of their best work outside of film, so why not now?”

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“Why am I on television?” Short muses, stretching out in a studio office after a long day of rehearsals and before a round of late-night wardrobe fittings. “My pat answer is that I’m a Canadian actor and there’s no star system in Canada and we like to work in film, television and theater at once--blah, blah, blah. Actually, this is about the pure joy of doing this kind of work. I think television is the best medium for comedy. It’s the most forgiving and the most immediate.”

The comic-actor has been brilliant on television before, as a cast member of both “SCTV” and “Saturday Night Live.” On those shows he proved himself to be a devastating mimic, and he also unleashed some wildly eccentric comic characters, such as the decidedly simple-minded Ed Grimley and the demented albino nightclub crooner Jackie Rogers Jr. In 1986, Short made the jump from small screen to big screen in “Three Amigos,” and last year he made a Tony-nominated Broadway debut in Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl.”

Short, 44, says he’s quite happy to be working in television again. “I’ve done two HBO specials and I had an animated, Saturday-morning Ed Grimley show, so I’ve never felt like I was very far away from television,” he said. “When I mentioned to my agents that I wanted to do television again, they assumed that I was talking about HBO. But I’ve done one-hour cable specials and I’ve done late-night. It seems like the really interesting success would be to do it in prime time. That’s what intrigues me, and that’s our grand experiment.”

‘The Martin Short Show” features Short playing the host of a TV comedy show, enabling him to do sketches, pre-taped sequences, character bits and biting parodies within a continuing story line. The show is something of a mini-”SCTV” reunion: Andrea Martin is part of the supporting cast, Eugene Levy will direct and make occasional appearances, and several “SCTV” writers are serving as co-executive producers.

Tuesday’s episode features Steve Martin reminiscing with Short about their times together on the set of “Three Amigos.” Martin also hits relentlessly on Short’s wife, played by Jan Hooks of “Saturday Night Live.”

Short is hoping that the show will find an audience and enjoy a healthy run, but he doesn’t intend to stop making films and says that scripts continue to come his way. “To be honest, I haven’t had many true financial hits in films, and the fact that I’ve worked this long and made so many I think is Hollywood’s way of saying that they like me. It’s a very nice compliment.”

He thinks the NBC series may give him the chance to hit a level of satisfaction in his work that’s been difficult to find in movie roles. “What I’m bringing to the show that’s new is a side of me I think people have seen on talk shows but haven’t seen in the movies. Whenever I’ve played myself in the movies, I haven’t been overly pleased, and on my specials I’ve always made fun of myself through characters. I wanted to design the show so that I could also be the way I am when I’m on ‘Letterman.’ The question will be whether anyone else cares to see that.

“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘What if the show fails?’ ” he continued. “I said, ‘It won’t fail.’ Maybe we won’t be correct for prime time, or maybe prime time will have subtly made us less effective than we should be. But I don’t think so. It’s been 10 years since ‘SCTV’ was on the air, and late-night and prime time have gotten a lot closer to each other.”

That’s not to say that Short doesn’t have a few lingering doubts about how his idiosyncratic comic talents will translate into prime time. “The scenario that I’d hate the most is that I’m bland, homogenized and a big hit. That’s a nightmare. That’s when you’d look at me and say ‘So sad--we thought he was interesting, and he’s a jerk.’ ”

Dudley Moore is hoping that “Daddy’s Girls” will provide him a better chance to be funny than he’s seen in the film scripts coming his way lately. “Television is a matter of fitting the material to the people. In a sense it’s trying to grasp who your basic character is. And that’s what I’m interested in playing now. I don’t see it in film scripts. I read a lot of synopses that are just pale imitations of ‘Arthur.’ ”

As part of a comedy team with Peter Cook, Moore spent 20 years creating comedy for theater, film and television. He says he sees some irony in taking on the challenge of prime time. “It’s a strange thing to talk about making a ‘successful transition’ from the large screen to the small screen,” Moore says, “because it used to be just the opposite. When I made the jump to films, people seemed to go on endlessly about ‘Oh, he hasn’t made the transition.’ I don’t know if there is much of a transition in the work. It comes down to these silly basic principles of how loud and how fast you perform. But the comedy is really the same.

“I will say that you have to keep things in perspective working in television,” he added. “Harvey Fierstein is one of my co-stars on ‘Daddy’s Girls,’ and he keeps telling me, ‘We are the stuff between commercials.’ You have to keep that in mind.”

Moore, 59, who starred in a short-lived sitcom last year for CBS, “Dudley,” is cast in “Daddy’s Girls” as the befuddled father of three young-adult daughters, dealing with a divorce and a troubled business. He is confident about the show’s comedic potential but says he’s still mystified as to what it takes to win in the ratings game.

“When you get some decent writers together and reasonable directors, you’re going to produce a decent product. The thing is, you have no idea how it’s going to do. You want to bring something fresh to the show, but the thing that seems to get TV audiences is familiarity. How you stay on long enough to become familiar, I’m not sure.”

Charles Joffe believes that giving the audience “person” as well as “persona” may be the key to success for television comedy. Joffe is one of Hollywood’s most experienced observers of comedy. Along with partner Jack Rollins, he has managed the careers of Woody Allen, Robert Klein, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams.

“The small screen is so microscopic, you have to project a lot of humanity,” Joffe says. “Television requires the viewer to feel they know the person they’re watching, much as a nightclub requires the audience to feel they’ve learned something from a comedian. Otherwise it’s all Chinese food--you love it for a moment but barely remember it afterward.

“The key for these three ‘new guys’ is going to be showing who they are and letting their comedy come out of that, rather than just from the funny they can create through characters. It’s a subtle proposition, but if they can pull that off, then the audience has somebody to identify with, somebody they feel they know, and maybe somebody they can grow to love.”

On a soundstage in Burbank, Wilder is battling Nordic Track and StairMaster machines, adding some slapstick to a health club scene in his show’s second episode. Director Barnet Kellman encourages Wilder to break into the chorus of “YMCA” as he goes for the burn, but a tape player must be fetched so that the actor can be made familiar with the finer points of the Village People hit.

In “Something Wilder,” the actor plays a late-in-life father who drops out of a fast-track city life to move his family to a seemingly idyllic small town.

During a lunch break, Wilder, 59, tucks into a plate of rice and vegetables in a small office. His piercing blue eyes and trademark halo of frizzed hair still lend him the look of a slightly mad descendant of the Von Frankenstein family, but he is as gentle and thoughtful as one might suspect from the air of vulnerability he brings to even his most crazed comic performances.

“Why am I doing this? I asked myself that question after I signed the contract,” he smiles. “I never in my life thought about doing TV. I was asked a few times, but why would I do TV? I loved the process of making films. But this show appealed to me, and one of the things that appealed to me most is that I didn’t have to be Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies all the time. I can be human and have softer sides, and then a scene later I’m doing (physical) comedy. Movies have changed and television has changed. Now it’s a matter of ‘let’s see the work.’ If the work is good, it’s good work. No matter where it is.”

After the death of his wife, Gilda Radner, Wilder took time off from any work, preferring to paint watercolors at his home in Connecticut. He has since remarried, and says he has found happiness again. “Something Wilder” was attractive to him not least because it was created with him in mind.

“The offer for this show came at a strange time in my life, and when I said, ‘Why should I do this?,’ one of the reasons is that I was asked. You should never underestimate the need that an actor has to be wanted.”

Like Short and Moore, Wilder will be satisfied with being watched.

“I’m not trying to build a career,” he says with a sly smile. “I’m not trying to get more money. I’m not trying to win awards. I’m not trying to become famous. I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. They already know who I am. I want to entertain people whose days are made a little easier by laughter.

“I haven’t done that many films, but I’ve been fortunate in that so many of them are well-known. They’ll remain what they are whether this show is a success or not. The show could be very good and still end after six episodes. If I stink in it and disappoint because of my performance, then I’ll feel really bad. But if I can be funny at my best level--all I want is for people to say, ‘We had a nice time.’ ”

Moore is equally content to give television his best effort. “I’m not waiting for my dream film script. I don’t think it’s out there,” he said. “I’m happy to have done ‘10’ and ‘Arthur,’ and why the others weren’t as much of a success is up in the air. I feel I’ve always been struggling to make myself OK, and I’m struggling again.

“I think of the old Hollywood line (about the arc of an actor’s career): ‘Who is Dudley Moore? Get me Dudley Moore. Get me a Dudley Moore look-alike. Get me a younger Dudley Moore. Who is Dudley Moore?’ That’s the path I’ve taken,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s a struggle to hold on and do good work, but it’s a satisfying struggle.”

Short’s search for prime-time satisfaction is partly inspired by the success of another late-night comedy specialist who’s moved to an earlier time slot. “When I looked at Letterman going to 11:30 and making that subtle adjustment (from 12:30), it didn’t make me love him less,” he says. “But he made a change because he had to. We’re trying to make the same kind of shift without losing the comedy. It is a precarious balancing act. That’s what we’re attempting, and I think you only fail if you don’t try. In comedy you can never think about that kind of failure, because then how could you do anything? How could I take the risk of dressing up like Jackie Rogers or Ed Grimley? How dare I? You have to be prepared to totally fail. And then you have to go ahead with it. Who knows, you might be on to something.”

With that hope, Short is ready to enjoy life on the small screen one way or another. “We’re finding our way, and I can’t wait to see show 10. But if it just doesn’t work, I’ll be more than happy to say ‘Let’s be off,’ and next year I’ll do an HBO special called ‘I, Martin Short, Go Network’ and satirize my whole journey here.”*