Jerry Maren

Actor Jerry Maren has had a 70 year plus distinguished career in Hollywood. He’s appeared in dozens of movies, been a regular on four television series and made guest appearances in scores of others, toured the nation as spokesperson for a variety of products and graced the live stage from coast to coast. From Munchkinland to McDonaldland, Jerry is most dearly loved for his featured role in MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz” opposite Judy Garland. As a member of the Lollipop Guild, Jerry was the Munchkin in the middle who welcomes Dorothy to Munchkinland with a giant lollipop.

Born and raised in Boston, Jerry began his show business career in vaudeville as a singer and dancer. A talent scout saw him singing and dancing in a show at a Boston hotel and that’s how he found out about MGM’s need for little people for “The Wizard of Oz.” He was only 17!

His career switched from the East Coast to the West Coast after Oz. He’s appeared in such films as “Terror of Tiny Town,” “Tiny Troubles” (an Our Gang comedy), “At the Circus” with the Marx Brothers, “Here We Go Again” with Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, Barbara Stanwyck’s “Flesh and Fantasy,” “Three Wise Fools” starring Margaret O’Brien, “Superman and the Mole Men” starring George Reeves, “The Little Cigars Mob” with Angel Tompkins, “Under the Rainbow” with Chevy Chase and “Battle for Planet of the Apes.” On television Jerry was a regular on “The Andy Williams Show,” “The Gong Show,” “The Magic Lady & Boko,” “Lidsville” which starred Butch Patrick and Charles Nelson Reilly and co-starred with Steve Guttenberg on the short-lived sitcom “No Soap Radio.” He has guest-starred or appeared on episodes of other TV series including “Laugh In,” “Julia,” “Star Trek,” “The Lucy Show,” “Seinfeld,” “The Odd Couple,” “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “When Things Were Rotten,” “The Sonny & Cher Show” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

From the 1940s to the 1980s, Jerry crammed a remarkable career as a product spokesperson in between his stints in films, on TV and on the stage. For the Brown Shoe Company he was Buster Brown in print ads and comic books as well as on posters, shoe boxes and store displays. He even played the famous Buster Brown with “…my dog Tige…” in the shoe company’s early 1950s TV commercials. He also spent ten years as Little Oscar for Oscar Mayer being chauffeured from city to city in the world famous Weinermobile. Beginning in the 1970s and lasting for more than a decade, Jerry did ten to fifteen commercials a year for McDonald’s playing The Hamburgler, Big Mac or Mayor McCheese..

In 2008, “Short and Sweet: The Life and Times of the Lollipop Munchkin,” written by Jerry with Steve Cox, was published by Cumberland House. Both Elizabeth and Jerry are proud of the acclaimed book and both love to travel the country meeting Oz fans. Jerry sums it up best with a quote form the book: “One of my favorite things is seeing the amazement of little kids . . .”

Biography by Allen Pease