#Munchkins wizard of oz tv
He'd go on to appear in dozens of other films, TV show and commercials. He would later recall being paid $50 a week for the role, twice what his father was making.
Having dreamed since childhood of a being a Hollywood film actor, he jumped at the chance. 24, 1920, Maren was singing and dancing at a show at a Connecticut hotel in 1938 when MGM talent scouts saw the diminutive teenage actor and invited him to Hollywood to join the munchkin cast. He stood out from almost all the others, however, as the "Lollipop Kid" who sang and danced his way to front and center before the film's star, Judy Garland as Dorothy, and then, with a flourish, handed her an oversized lollipop.īorn Gerald Marenghi in Boston on Jan. Maren, who stood just 4-foot-3, was one of more than 100 little people recruited to play munchkins in the movie. "But then I realized," he added, "Geez, it must have been a hell of a picture, because everyone remembers it everywhere I go." "I've done so many things in show business but people say, 'You were in The Wizard of Oz?' It takes people's breath away," he told writer Paul Zollo during a 2011 interview for the publication North Hollywood Patch. He would show up regularly at film conventions, munchkin gatherings and other events honoring the cast over the years. In an entertainment career that spanned more than 70 years, he portrayed The Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese in McDonald's commercials, appeared in scores of films and TV shows and made personal appearances as Little Oscar for Oscar Mayer hot dogs.īut it was his role as one of the Lollipop Kids in The Wizard of Oz that always held a special place in his heart. Maren died May 24 at a San Diego nursing home, his niece, Stacy Michelle Barrington, confirmed Wednesday. Raabe's wife of more than 50 years, Marie Hartline, died in a car crash in 1997.LOS ANGELES - Jerry Maren, the last surviving munchkin from the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and the one who famously welcomed Dorothy to Munchkin Land, has died at age 98. "It's a fantasy picture that will be fantasy for generations to come." 1989 The Munchkins Remember The Wizard Of Oz And Beyond By Stephen Cox Signed By Author And A Few Munchkins Vintage Paperback Book. "There is nothing in the picture that dates it," he told the AP in 1988 of The Wizard of Oz's success.
He was one of seven surviving Munchkins present when the Munchkins received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007. Raabe regularly attended the annual OzFest in Chittenango, N.Y., and co-authored a book in 2005, Memories of a Munchkin: An Illustrated Walk Down the Yellow Brick Road. He toured the country in the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile for 30 years as "Little Oscar, the World's Smallest Chef." Raabe was 3 1/2 feet tall in Oz and grew to about 4 1/2 feet. He was 22 at the time of shooting and earned money for college by performing. in 1915, Raabe performed at world fairs such as the Chicago World's Fair and the San Diego Exposition before The Wizard of Oz began shooting in 1938. He famously pronounced the witch dead after Dorothy's farmhouse landed on her: "As coroner, I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."īorn in Watertown, Wis. Raabe was one of 124 Munchkins in the film and one of only nine with speaking roles.
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