Meinhardt Raabe, 94, Munchkin coroner in 'Oz'

Meinhardt Raabe, 94, who played the Munchkin coroner in The Wizard of Oz and proclaimed in the movie that the Wicked Witch of the East was "really most sincerely dead," died Friday at a hospital in Orange Park, Fla., said his caregiver, Cindy Bosnyak.

Mr. Raabe (pronounced RAH'-bee) was one of the few surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film classic.

He was one of the film's 124 Munchkins and one of only nine with speaking parts. He was 22 and a show-business veteran, earning money for college as a "midget" performer, as they were called then, when Oz was shot in 1938.

He portrayed the Munchkin official who solemnly pronounces the witch dead after Dorothy's farmhouse lands on her: "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

Mr. Raabe was about 31/2 feet tall when the movie was made. He eventually grew to about 41/2 feet. He toured the country for 30 years in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, promoting hot dogs as "Little Oscar, the World's Smallest Chef."

He also enjoyed going to Oz nostalgia events and getting fan mail. "It's an ego trip," he said. "This is our reward, the nostalgia."

In 2005, his book Memories of a Munchkin: An Illustrated Walk Down the Yellow Brick Road, cowritten by Daniel Kinske, was published.

Mr. Raabe married Marie Hartline, who worked for a vaudeville show called Rose's Royal Midget Troupe, in 1946. She died in a car crash in 1997.