Karl Slover, 93, one of last actors who played a Munchkin in ‘Oz’

By Associated Press,

Karl Slover, 93, one of the last surviving actors who played Munchkins in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz,” died Nov. 15 at a hospital in Dublin, Ga.

The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest, said a spokeswoman for the local coroner.

The 4-foot-5 Mr. Slover was best known for playing the lead trumpeter in the Munchkins’ band but also had roles as a townsman and soldier in the film, said John Fricke, author of “100 Years of Oz” and five other books on the movie and its star, Judy Garland. Mr. Slover was one of the tiniest male Munchkins in the movie.

Long after Mr. Slover retired, he continued to appear around the country at festivals and events related to the movie. He was one of seven Munchkins at the 2007 unveiling of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dedicated to the actors who played Munchkins in the movie. Only three remain of the 124 actors who played the Munchkins.

Mr. Slover is the first of the three trumpeters to herald the Munchkin mayor when he makes his entrance. Mr. Slover had been cast to play the second trumpeter but switched when another actor got stage fright during filming, said longtime friend Allen Pease, the co-founder of the former Munchkinland Market Days outside Chesterton, Ind.

“Karl didn’t know what stage fright meant,” he said.

Mr. Slover was born Karl Kosiczky in what is now the Czech Republic, and he was the only child in his family to be dwarf size.

“In those uninformed days, his father tried witch doctor treatments to make him grow,” Fricke said.

He was buried in the back yard, immersed in heated oil until his skin blistered and then attached to a stretching machine at a hospital, all in the attempt to make him become taller. Eventually he was sold by his father at 9 to a traveling show in Europe, Fricke said.

Mr. Slover continued to perform into his late 20s, when he moved to the United States, changed his name and appeared in circuses as part of a vaudeville group known as the Singer Midgets. The group’s 30 performers became the nucleus of the Munchkins.

He was paid $50 a week for the movie and told friends that Garland’s dog in the movie, Toto, made more money.

Mr. Slover settled in Florida in the early 1940s and worked for a traveling carnival show owned by Bert and Ada Slover. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Slovers brought him into their home and gave them his last name without legally adopting him.