After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he was turned down for employment by one company after another until Oscar Mayer hired him as a salesman. After visiting the Midget Village at Chicago's Century of Progress in 1933, he realized he was not alone and took a summer job with the fair the next year. Raabe did not hear the words "midget" or "dwarf" until young adulthood, and for a long time believed no one else might also be like him. He later went on to get his MBA at Drexel University. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1937, with a bachelor's degree in accounting. Raabe was born in Watertown, Wisconsin as a son of Henry H. He portrayed the coroner who certified the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. He was one of the last surviving Munchkin-actors in The Wizard of Oz, and was also the last surviving cast member with any dialogue in the film. They got just US$50 a week (about US$900 today) - more than they could have expected outside Hollywood but still little more than a third of what Terry, the Cairn terrier who played Dorothy's dog, Toto, was paid.Meinhardt Frank Raabe ( / ˈ m aɪ n ˌ h ɑːr t ˈ r ɑː b i/ Septem– April 9, 2010) was an American actor.
The strange-looking creature in a shot shortly after Dorothy meets the Tinman was actually, say film historians, a tame emu, one of many creatures allowed to wander around the set to add colour.Ī fact every Munchkin would happily admit was true is that they were badly paid. The most disturbing Munchkin anecdote is surely a Hollywood myth: that a lovelorn Munchkin hanged himself on set and was actually filmed hanging from a tree. He threatened to murder Becker and was thrown off the production for anti-social behaviour. Those rotten apples certainly included the permanently drunk Charles Kelley, who turned up on set packing two loaded pistols after hearing that Charlie Becker, another midget who played the mayor of Munchkinland, had been making eyes at his wife, Jessie, also a Munchkin. However, they insisted a handful of 'lush hounds' had got them all a bad reputation. Surviving Munchkin actors don't dismiss the stories out of hand, and admit there was a certain amount of partying. It has become fashionable in recent years to dismiss the stories about Munchkin madness as 'heightist' bigotry - a mixture of exaggeration and invention cooked up by people who were shocked to discover that midgets behaved just like them.
"He had got plastered during lunch, fallen in the toilet bowl and could not get out." "We heard a whining sound coming from the men's room," said Jack Dawn, the chief make-up artist on the movie. The truth is that midgets had limited career opportunities, especially during the Depression of the Thirties, and they often resorted to crime or begging to make ends meet.įemale Munchkins were accused of propositioning studio electricians, while one notorious midget, nicknamed the Count, was never sober - paying a terrible price for his drunkenness.
It's hardly a surprise that some of the Munchkins, who couldn't believe their luck in coming to Hollywood, had brought some of their bad old ways with them. Assistants were ordered to watch the crew of midgets, who brandished knives, and often conceived passions for other, larger personnel." He wondered patronisingly whether they 'had little inhibitions to go with their little stature'.īert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion, wrote in his memoir: "Many of the Munchkins made their living by panhandling, pimping and whoring. we had to have police on just about every floor." He added: "Almost every night, the Culver City police had to rush over to the hotel to keep them from killing each other.
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