OBITUARIES / PASSINGS / Mickey Carroll

Mickey Carroll, 89, one of the last surviving Munchkins from the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz,” died in his sleep Thursday in suburban St. Louis.

His caretaker, Linda Dodge, said Carroll had heart problems and received a pacemaker in February, but she attributed his death at her home in Crestwood, Mo., to natural causes.

Carroll was one of more than 100 adults and children who were recruited to play the natives of what author L. Frank Baum called Munchkin Country in his 1900 book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Carroll was born Michael Finocchiaro on July 8, 1919, in St. Louis, the son of Italian immigrants. In the 1920s, he worked in Chicago clubs and on the Orpheum Theater vaudeville circuit.

Carroll’s gift of gab and comedic timing helped his popularity. He warmed up crowds for President Franklin Roosevelt while campaigning in New York City and served as a crowd-getter in President Truman’s whistle-stop campaign.

“Oz” was Carroll’s only movie. When it appeared on television in the 1960s, he found a new career at charitable events, retail events and Oz- related events.

He played the part of the Munchkinland Town Crier, marched as a Munchkin Soldier and was the candy-striped Fiddler who escorted the movie’s wide-eyed orphan, Dorothy Gale, played by Judy Garland, down the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City.

In the mid-1940s, Carroll returned to St. Louis to run the family’s cemetery monument business. He sold it in 1996.

In November 2007, Carroll and six other surviving Munchkins received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.