Last surviving Munchkin from ‘The Wizard of Oz’

LOS ANGELES — Actor Jerry Maren, the green-clad tough guy of the Lollipop Guild who famously handed Dorothy (Judy Garland) a giant lollipop in the 1939 film classic “The Wizard of Oz,” has died at age 98.

Standing at 4-foot-3, Mr. Maren was the longest-living member of the Munchkins and the last surviving little person to appear in the iconic film.

He died May 24 in a San Diego nursing home, his niece Stacy Michelle Barrington confirmed to the Los Angeles Times. News of his death only began circulating Wednesday. His nephew Lloyd Decker told The New York Times that the cause of death was congestive heart failure.

Mr. Maren suffered from dementia for the past several years.

The diminutive actor paved the way for many like him who followed him to Tinseltown and helped found Little People of America, an organization devoted to improving the status of little people.

“Hey, I’m a normal human being. All of us little people are,” Mr. Maren told the LA Times in 1993. “Some are wise guys. Some are a pain in the ass, just like the bigger folks. All the world is represented in little people.”

Mr. Maren moved beyond society’s stereotypes of shortness to make a successful living as an actor and spokesman. He racked up nearly 100 film and TV credits and starred in several commercials. He also played McDonald’s Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese as well as Buster Brown and Little Oscar in Oscar Mayer’s 1950s ad campaigns.

Actor Kevin Thompson, a longtime friend of Mr. Maren’s and also a member of Little People of America, met Mr. Maren while they played on the Hollywood Shorties baseball team for little people when Mr. Thompson was 11 years old. Mr. Thompson, who appeared with Mr. Maren in several pilots, noted that Mr. Maren “worked eight days a week as an actor, extra, stand-in or stunt double.”

“Everybody knew Jerry Maren on every set I ever went to,” Mr. Thompson said. “If he wasn’t working, he was down at the Santa Anita racetrack. He liked those ponies … he was a downright nice guy, always had a cigar in his mouth like George Burns.”

Stephen Cox — who co-authored Mr. Maren’s 2008 autobiography, “Short and Sweet: The Life and Times of the Lollipop Munchkin,” and “The Munchkins of Oz” — tracked down all the Munchkins years after “The Wizard of Oz” debuted.

“He was one of the few pituitary dwarves, meaning they are proportionally correct, only miniature,” Mr. Cox told the LA Times on Wednesday. “And that’s the type of little people that MGM sought when they were making ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”

Of the 124 Munchkins who appeared in the film, about 96 percent were pituitary dwarves, Mr. Cox said.