The last of the flying monkeys and stand-in for MickeyRooney

Sig Frolich, who has died aged 97, was a bit-part actor for much of his career in Hollywood, playing messengers, waiters, callboys, clerks and soldiers, rarely earning even a flicker of recognition from viewers over 50 years.

But he achieved some lasting celebrity as a winged monkey in The Wizard of Oz

(1939), despite the fact that he was completely disguised in a monkey costume and uttered no words on screen.

The 13 actors playing these unlovely animals, in the service of the Wicked Witch of the West, were originally promised $25 for each time they swooped down screaming from the sky on the heroine, Dorothy (Judy Garland). Director Victor Fleming protested that this sum was the usual fee for a whole day’s work. But it was agreed that Frohlich, an early member of the Screen Actors’ Guild, receive an extra $5 per swoop, since he was the one who snatched Dorothy’s dog, Toto.

Frohlich, the last surviving monkey, found himself constantly questioned about the film.

Not only do the monkeys have the honour of being listed at 94 in the top 100 film monsters of all time, the slim steel tracks in the reinforced rafters of MGM Sound Stage 29 are still in place as a haunting reminder for visitors.

A son of German immigrants, Siegfried Frohlich was born in New York City on June 25, 1908. He started out as a screen shifter at Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer, then became a chorus singer in the many musicals churned out by the studio each month.

In 1938 Frolich signed a contract with MGM that led to smaller parts, such as the man lighting a cigarette opposite Ava Gardner in the romantic comedy This Time for Keeps

( 1942).

After Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Force to become a B-24 gunner. Upon his return, he was hired as Mickey Rooney’s stand-in for various films.

The two became good friends, not least because Frohlich once pushed the pint-sized star to the floor to avoid a stone falling from the roof.

If some wondered whether he minded the modesty of his career, Frohlich, whose surname means happy in German, had no doubt. He was MGM’s most senior star, and he was delighted to sign autographs for visitors to his nursing home.

He died on Sept. 30.