Meinhardt Raabe, the oldest surviving Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, has died at the age of 94. Mr. Raabe played the Coroner who pronounced the Wicked Witch of the East deceased — I believe the official Cause of Death was that a house fell on her — and he "sang" the four lines that began, "As coroner, I must aver…" In truth, the voice you heard in the film was the sped sound of a vocalist named Rad Robinson, a member of the Ken Darby Singers, a singing group that was heard all throughout the film. Mr. Darby was the movie's Vocal Arranger.
Perhaps you didn't know that Mr. Raabe was dubbed. For much of his life, Mr. Raabe apparently didn't, either. He long assumed that it was his voice — electronically altered but his — heard on the soundtrack. It was only in later years that he was informed otherwise.
That's one of the things I find interesting about Meinhardt Raabe. Another is that in his senior decades, he found an amazing stardom and even made some serious dollars making personal appearances and doing autograph shows. I know some find that circuit depressing…and it is sad in a way to see someone who was briefly on a hit TV show of the sixties or in some long-ago movie now sitting behind a table somewhere, hoping someone will lay down $20 for their signature. But for some, it's a chance to be a bit of a star again and to make a bit of the money they're not making as their work is rerun and reissued and remonetized without residuals being paid. I'd think it was more depressing if they didn't have that opportunity.
Mr. Raabe turned his 13 seconds of screen time (plus a few crowd shots) into lasting fame and a bit of an income…and good for him. I saw him a couple times at comic and film conventions, striding about in a replica of his high-collared Coroner suit, thrilled that people cared who he was. He certainly didn't seem to mind answering the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over.
The one time we spoke, I avoided those stories and asked him about his stint as the first Little Oscar, the mascot for the Oscar Mayer meat company. In that capacity, he drove around the country in the first Wienermobile — the 1936 model seen above — making personal appearances for that brand of hot dogs. So did a number of other "little people" over the years…and I never quite understood the premise. I mean, if you had a company that made frankfurters and you wanted to sell the idea to parents that their kids would grow up to be big and strong if they ate your product, wouldn't you want someone tall as your spokesperson?
I'm guessing that wienermobile was the key to it. Once they'd decided to have such a vehicle, they realized it wouldn't look very impressive if their mascot was taller than it was…so the choice was to build a huge, expensive wienermobile or to hire a shorter mascot. As a kid, I saw the current model wienermobile in photos and on TV and for lack of scale, I imagined something like a Rose Parade float, immense in size. The day it finally came to the Food Giant near me, I thought we'd gotten the Cocktail Frank version.
Here's a photo of four Little Oscars — left to right, George A. Molchan, Joe White, Meinhardt Raabe and Jerry Maren. I'm guessing the towering presence in the middle of the photo is Mr. Oscar F. Mayer, himself. Maren is the one I remember in Los Angeles in the fifties. He was always popping up at L.A. supermarkets and on our local kids' shows. He appeared about every other week on Channel 9 with Engineer Bill, who always seemed to have it in for poor Jerry. One of the things Engineer Bill sold for a time on his show was a product called Silly Soap, which was basically shaving cream in a colorful aerosol package for kids. The ads encouraged you to spray your friends with Silly Soap and then hop into the tub and wash with it. The filmed commercials suggested you could sculpt it into a lovely hair style or a funny beard but you couldn't. Just another of the many lies children are told.
Engineer Bill seemed to have crates of it on his set and he would occasionally spray an off-camera stagehand with the stuff. When Little Oscar came on the show, the Engineer had an opportunity — one he could not resist — to foam someone on-camera. Not only that but half a can of Silly Soap could easily cover Jerry Maren, head to toe…so when he came on, trying to deliver his pitch for Oscar Mayer All-Meat Franks (no filler), he'd have to dodge Engineer Friggin' Bill, who'd be chasing him around the cheesy set with two cans of Silly Soap, one in each hand, determined at all costs to suds the midget.
Maren was a pro…a guy who's still with us and who's had an amazing career. He'd worked with the Marx Brothers. He'd worked on the Superman TV show. He was in The Wizard of Oz, too. He knew that the bit had to have a payoff; that the audience would be disappointed if he didn't get Silly Soaped. So he'd just try to avoid the inevitable until he was done selling hot dogs and then he'd let Engineer Bill cover him with shaving cream. When I saw him recently, we talked about that, the most dangerous assignment of his many years in show business.
When I discussed playing Little Oscar with Meinhardt Raabe, he had no tales of crazed kid show hosts trying to slather him with soap, silly or otherwise. He complained about kids poking him and how poorly he was paid and driving around in the hot, not-air-conditioned wienermobile to Godforsaken locations where boorish children threw things at you. I have no doubt it was a rough way to make a buck, and I'm sure Jerry Maren had all the same problems. But to Jerry, who was and is a genuine actor/performer, it was all part of show business, which is why he's worked in it his entire life. Still, I'm glad Mr. Raabe had his little piece of it. He sure did more with 13 dubbed seconds than anyone else ever has.