No doubt the flag is flying at half-mast in front of the Lollipop Guild headquaters today.
Ruth Robinson Duccini, the last surviving actress to play a Munchkin in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” died Thursday in Las Vegas after a brief illness, according to the Associated Press. She was 95.
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Stephen Cox, author of “The Munchkins of Oz” and a friend of the deceased actress, said that she died of natural causes.
Duccini, who stood four feet tall, was born Ruth Robinosn in Rush City, Minn., on July 23, 1918. She met her husband, Fred Duccini, also a little person (but not a Munchkin in the film) while working at MGM; the two married in 1943. She and her husband lived most of their life in Los Angeles and later retired to Bullhead City, Ariz.
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They had two children of average size, Margaret and Fred. Ruth’s husband, Fred, died in 1994 and Ruth lived in Arizona and Las Vegas in her final years. She is survived by her son, Fred, and daughter, Margaret, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Duccini also appeared in the 1981 movie “Under the Rainbow,” about the making of “The Wizard of Oz.”
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Of the 124 actors who were cast as Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz,” only Jerry Maren, 93, is now still living.