Mickey Carroll

Mickey Carroll, born Michael Finocchiaro on July 8, 1919, in St. Louis, Missouri, was an American actor who worked in radio, film, and on Broadway. The son of Italian immigrants, he was born alongside a twin sister who was of average height. He died on May 7, 2009, in Crestwood, Missouri, from a heart ailment and complications from Alzheimer's disease.

Carroll began his performing career in St. Louis, where he took dance lessons at the Fox Theater as a child. At seventeen he was among six bellhops featured in live radio advertisements for "Call for Phillip Morris," and by eighteen he was performing in shows alongside Mae West. While under contract to MGM, he attended school with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.

It was Garland who personally offered Carroll a role in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, in which he portrayed three distinct Munchkin characters: the Town Crier, dressed in a purple cloak with a yellow flower in his striped vest; a Munchkin Soldier; and one of the candy-striped Fiddlers who escorted Dorothy along the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City. Carroll was among the last surviving actors to have played a Munchkin in the film. In November 2007, he and six other remaining Munchkin cast members received stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year he served as a grand marshal in parades, appeared on radio and television programs nationwide, signed autographs for fans, and participated in charitable fundraising.

Following the film's success, Carroll left show business and returned to St. Louis in the mid-1940s to operate the family business, Standard Monument Company, a cemetery monument maker founded in 1911 with a shop and showroom on St. Charles Rock Road in Wellston. He ran the company until selling it in 1996, after which he devoted his time to charity work.

Carroll's Broadway career included an appearance in 1947 in the play A Young Man's Fancy. After his death, a funeral Mass was held at the New Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Lindell Boulevard, and he was entombed at Calvary Cemetery Shrine Mausoleum in St. Louis.