Jerry Maren, the actor who cherished his role as the middle Lollipop Guild Munchkin who serenades Judy Garland in the 1939 film classic “The Wizard of Oz,” died May 24 at an assisted care facility in LaJolla, Calif. He was 98.
In the iconic scene when Garland’s character Dorothy arrives in Technicolor Munchkinland, it’s Maren in his Munchkin guise who presents her with a large lollipop in appreciation that her Kansas house landed on top of the Wicked Witch of the East.
“Working on ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was an experience entirely unlike anything else I had done, seeing so many little people all working on the same project,” Maren told me in a 1999 interview while appearing at the Wizard of Oz Festival in Chesterton.
“If you have to have people always associating you with something, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is something great to be part of as someone else’s memory.”
For more than two decades, the annual Wizard of Oz Festival in Chesterton was a highlight for “Oz” fans, who got to greet the arrival of those who portrayed the Munchkins. During the festival’s biggest years, in the 1990s, as many as 20 Munchkins and spouses would attend the event, with Maren and his wife, Elizabeth, (who did not appear in the film) as ambassadors for the festival until it ended in 2012.
I wrote about Maren in December, describing him as the final Munchkin survivor of the original 124 who had roles in the film. That column drew interest and email responses from fans, journalists and interested parties from as far away as London.
“Jerry Maren is not the last surviving Munchkin,” Dana Bernhoft wrote in an email. “My mother, Joan Kenmore, was one of 10 children who played child Munchkins in the film and she is alive and well at age 86. It would be nice if she got some credit.”
Jerry and his wife, Elizabeth, who died in 2011, reunited with Kenmore, who is from Dana Point, Calif., and other surviving Munchkins in November 2007 in Los Angeles when the Munchkins were honored with a star unveiled on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. I was at the ceremony in Los Angeles and interviewed Maren, Kenmore and others about the honor.
Maren was one of the four original “Little Oscars” to portray the brand’s tiny chef spokesman for Oscar Mayer, working with the late George Molchan, of Hobart, who also rotated in the role before his death in 2005.
Maren donned a top hat and tossed confetti to the delight of grinning host Chuck Barris as a regular featured act on “The Gong Show” in the 1970s and was featured in McDonald’s TV commercials as the costumed characters Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese.
His feature film credits included starring opposite Groucho Marx and The Marx Brothers in “At the Circus” in 1939 and playing a monkey in “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” in 1973.
Sometimes, Maren and his wife just played themselves. They dressed as a bride and groom for the filming of a 1996 Hootie and the Blowfish music video. A year later, they appeared in an episode of the NBC-TV series “Seinfeld,” the same episode that introduced the expression “yada, yada, yada.” The couple played the little people parents to a shocked Kramer, who was dating their very tall daughter.
In later years, Maren was one of the most outspoken of his Munchkin contemporaries.
Whether complaining about not receiving residuals from “The Wizard of Oz” after Ted Turner bought the film rights in 1985 or reminding of the discrepancy in pay during the original filming — with Munchkins being paid $50 a week while the dog who played Toto earned $125 — Maren was vocal. While the other Munchkins would wear re-creations of their soldier costumes, flowerpots on their heads and other assorted odd ensembles in the guise of their original “Oz” film wardrobe for paid personal appearances, Maren always refused.
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