Meinhardt Raabe, Famous Munchkin, Is Dead at 94
Matthew Kruk
April 9, 2010
Meinhardt Raabe, Famous Munchkin, Is Dead at 94
By MARGALIT FOX
As coroner, I must aver
I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead,
She's really most sincerely dead.
When Meinhardt Raabe, an unknown 23-year-old from Wisconsin, sang those
lines in his first and only Hollywood feature film, he little suspected
that they would shape the course of his life for the next seven decades.
The lines, of course, belong to the Munchkin coroner in the classic 1939
movie "The Wizard of Oz." Mr. Raabe's brief appearance in the film -
about 13 seconds of uncredited screen time - made him an internationally
recognized pop-cultural figure, if not precisely a household name.
Mr. Raabe, who was also a wartime aviator and the first Little Oscar,
the mascot of the Oscar Mayer meat company, died Friday in Orange Park,
Fla., at 94. Bob Rigel, president of the Penney Retirement Community in
Penney Farms, Fla., where Mr. Raabe had lived since 1986, said that the
cause had not been officially determined but that it was presumed to be
a heart attack.
At his death, Mr. Raabe was one of a handful of surviving Munchkins from
the film.
With his high-collared indigo cloak and curly brimmed hat, Mr. Raabe's
character was known to generations of moviegoers for his official
proclamation, sung in warbling tones as he unfurled an outsize death
certificate: The Wicked Witch of the East was dead, the victim of blunt
force trauma from an errant Kansas farmhouse.
At four feet, Mr. Raabe (pronounced Robby) was among the taller little
people, or midgets as they were then known, hired for the film's
Munchkinland scenes. Though more than 100 Munchkins appeared on screen,
his role was one of just a few with dialogue - lines he obligingly
repeated, month in and month out, for the next 70 years as a
motivational speaker before school groups, Rotary Clubs and Oz
conventions.
Meinhardt Raabe was born on Sept. 2, 1915, in Watertown, Wis. Though he
never surpassed 4 feet 7 inches at his tallest (he continued to grow
till he was in his 30s), he did not hear the word "dwarf," or even
"midget," until he was a young adult. No one in his community had seen a
person with dwarfism before. Growing up, he later said, he assumed there
was no one else in the world like him.
That changed in 1933, when the young Mr. Raabe visited the Midget
Village at the Chicago World's Fair. There before his eyes was a world
of men and women just like him. Thrilled, he took a job as a barker
there the next summer.
Mr. Raabe received a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University
of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1937, and an M.B.A. from Drexel University in
Philadelphia in 1970. A skilled aviator, he served stateside in the
Civil Air Patrol in World War II, by all accounts the smallest pilot in
uniform.
On graduating from Wisconsin, Mr. Raabe was turned down for one
corporate job after another. As he recalled in his autobiography,
"Memories of a Munchkin" (Back Stage Books, 2005; with Daniel Kinske),
one recruiter told him he belonged in a carnival.
He eventually joined Oscar Mayer as a salesman. After the company made
him Little Oscar, "the World's Smallest Chef," he spent nearly 30 years
touring the country in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, promoting the
company's wares.
In late 1938, after Mr. Raabe heard that Hollywood was hiring midgets
for a film, he took a leave from his job and boarded a train west. At
MGM, he found his excellent diction, honed in his work as a barker and a
meat salesman, stood him in good stead: he won the part of the coroner
in "The Wizard of Oz." Though he wrote in his memoir that he came to
believe his lines in the finished film (and those of all the other
Munchkins) were dubbed, Mr. Raabe remained a fan of "The Wizard of Oz"
to the end of his life.
Mr. Raabe's wife, the former Marie Hartline, who spent her youth touring
with a midget vaudeville act, died in 1997. He is survived by a sister,
Marion Ziegelmann, of Watertown, Wis.
In 2007, Mr. Raabe was on hand when a star collectively honoring the
Munchkins was unveiled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Robert Catt
> Photo:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/movies/10raabe.html
>
> April 9, 2010
> Meinhardt Raabe, Famous Munchkin, Is Dead at 94
> By MARGALIT FOX
> As coroner, I must aver
> I thoroughly examined her.
> And she's not only merely dead,
> She's really most sincerely dead.
Here's Meinhard, re-creating those lines years later.
R H Draney
Like all the Munchkins, his lines in the movie were looped by someone else....r
--
"Oy! A cat made of lead cannot fly."
- Mark Brader declaims a basic scientific principle