Little Man, Big Heart

Meinhardt Raabe, 82, who played the Munchkin coroner in “The Wizard of Oz,” was in critical condition along with his wife Wednesday after a car accident near their home in rural northeastern Florida. Raabe was 22 years old and about 3 feet tall when the movie was shot. He was the Munchkin who pronounced the Wicked Witch of the East “not only merely dead but really, most sincerely dead” after Dorothy’s farmhouse landed on her. He toured the country for 30 years in the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, promoting hot dogs as “Little Oscar, the World’s Smallest Chef.”