{"id":2039851,"date":"2025-09-21T23:21:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T23:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2039851"},"modified":"2025-09-21T23:21:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T23:21:02","slug":"elaine-merk-binder-one-of-the-last-surviving-munchkins-from-the-wizard-of-oz-dies-at-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/elaine-merk-binder-one-of-the-last-surviving-munchkins-from-the-wizard-of-oz-dies-at-94\/","title":{"rendered":"Elaine Merk Binder, One of the Last Surviving Munchkins from \u2018The Wizard of Oz\u2019, Dies at 94"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Elaine Merk Binder, one of the last surviving actors who played a Munchkin<\/a> in the 1939 classic \u201cThe Wizard of Oz<\/a>,\u201d has died, according to her daughter Annette Phillips<\/a>. She was 94.<\/p>\n

Binder<\/a> auditioned for \u201cThe Wizard of Oz<\/a>\u201d in 1938 and was selected as one of the eight children who would dance and sing as part of the Munchkin ensemble.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried out for the \u2018Wizard of Oz\u2019 Munchkins. For me it was scary. It was my first big call for girls from a major studio,\u201d Binder recalled of the experience. \u201cI was relieved when Bud told the dance director, \u2018She\u2019s O.K.<\/a>\u2019 I did not have to perform like the others did. And they selected me as one of the eight who would both dance and sing. We learned later that they had added girls to the Little People because they had the mistaken impression that the Little People were not athletic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elaine Merk Binder, one of the last surviving actors who played a Munchkin in the 1939 classic \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d has died, according to her daughter Annette Phillips. She was 94. Binder auditioned for \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d in 1938 and was selected as one of the eight children who would dance and sing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2039852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[25538,31714,21751,22556,21993,22860,21912,21738,24141,22205,21913],"class_list":["post-2039851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Elaine-Merk-Binder-One-of-the-Last-Surviving-Munchkins-from.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2039851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2039852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2039851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2039851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2039851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}