Meinhardt Raabe who played the Munchkin coroner in the 1939 MGM film classic "The Wizard of Oz" has died, said Jean Nelson, founder of the Wizard of Oz Festival in Chesterton.

Nelson said Raabe died Friday morning at the Florida retirement home where he had lived in recent years. He was 94.

Raabe was the oldest surviving Munchkin from the film, which originally starred 124 little people featured in the scene showcasing Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale character arriving in Oz.

Raabe, whose last visit to the festival was in 2005 to autograph copies of his then-just-released autobiography, was one of the most recognizable Munchkins in the film's opening scene in Munchkinland.

After Dorothy's farmhouse lands on the mean Wicked Witch of the East, the sister of equally green meanie the Wicked Witch of the West, it was Raabe in guise of the Munchkin corner who declares in song: "I've thoroughly examined her. And she's not just merely dead, she really most sincerely dead."

Raabe enjoyed his late-in-life fame for being recognized for his "Oz" film role, including making the talk show rounds in 2005 while promoting his book, including a funny appearance recently on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show.

His large hardcover autobiography, "Memories of a Munchkin" (Backstage Books, 2005), was co-authored with Daniel Kinske.

Raabe was full of stories of old Hollywood. He worked with late legendary greats Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan in the "Tarzan" movies of the 1930s and 1940s as Cheetah the Chimp.

His book included a forward by Judy Garland's dear friend Mickey Rooney and kind acknowledgments by Garland's daughter Lorna Luft. The cover features a rare caricature of Rabbe in a coroner's cape and Garland as Dorothy drawn years ago by the late, great Al Hirschfeld.

In 2005, the original vest worn by Raabe in "The Wizard of Oz" sold for $34,000 on eBay.

Raabe has said his favorite part of attending festivals dedicated to the film is the opportunity to reunite with the other little people associated with the film.

"When I heard about this film being made back in 1938, it was through an agent who said MGM needed as many little people as they could find for a film starring Judy Garland," Raabe has said.

"I never dreamed that 60 years later, I'd be writing a book about the experience."