"... she noticed coming down toward her a group of
the queerest people she had ever seen. They were not as big as the grown folk
she had always been used to; but neither were they very small. In fact, they
seemed about as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age,
although they were, so far as looks go, many years older.” – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum,1900)
There were 124
adult actors who played Munchkins in the "The Wizard of Oz". Because the story line
called for proportional dwarfs as opposed to achondroplasic dwarfs, all of
those actors were afflicted with pituitary dwarfism (hypopituitarism), but
perhaps the most well known Munchkin actor was Karl Slover.
Slover was born Karl
Kosiczky on September
21, 1918 in Prakovce, Slovakia to a 6’6”
father and a 6’3” mother. He was of
normal size for the first few years of his life, after which his growth slowed
to a crawl and he was diagnosed in early childhood with pituitary dwarfism, which means that his pituitary gland stopped functioning properly resulting in a growth hormone deficiency. None of his sisters were affected. At
8 years old Slover stood barely over 2’ tall. His father, a gendarme, wished
that his only son would follow in his footsteps and thus was unaccepting of his
son’s diagnosis. In desperation Slover’s father came up with a multitude of
“bright ideas and brainstorms” and tried “witch doctor treatments”, as Slover has
put it, to increase the height of his son.
"He got a big wooden barrel and filled it with coconut
leaves and boiled them, and then put me in it. I was as red as a lobster when
they took me out." Slover remembered.
He also recalled the time eight doctors came in and put him
on a medieval style stretching rack in hopes that he would gain coveted inches.
Slover said after his bones began popping that “one of the doctors thought they
were doing it all wrong”.
Further describing a “treatment” in which they would bury
the young boy up to his head in sand, Slover said "They would put me in a
sand pile. I would wear a pair of long underwear. We had a maid. My mother
would tell the maid, who came in around 2:00 p.m. one day, to get me out around
4:00 while she went to the grocery store. The maid went inside and it began to
rain. I cried out for the maid, but she didn’t hear me. I called to our dog, a
Doberman Pinscher. She came over and picked me up and drug me over to the dog’s
house. Our dog loved us. My mother got home and asked where I was. The maid
shrieked, ‘I forgot about Karl. He’s still out in the yard.’ My mother looked
at the sand pile, and I wasn’t there where I was supposed to be. My mother
called to me. I told her, ‘I’m here in the dog’s house.”.
Shortly thereafter a letter came in the mail from a circus
agent with the attempt of recruiting Slover to join the world’s largest dwarf
show, Singer’s Midget Show in Vienna, Austria. Slover’s father then decided to
sell his son to the traveling circus where he was billed as the “World’s
Smallest Midget”.
"Dad and I went to the train station. He told Mr.
Singer that he was glad to get rid of me and that I would do him no good in
following in his footsteps," Slover said. He would never see his father again.
Singer exhibited Slover in Liliputstadt, a "midget
city" at the Venice in Vienna amusement park. While Slover was saddened by
the loss of his family, he found acceptance in his new world. "I was with
little people more my size. It was like a new family," said Slover.
After World War I broke out, Singer’s Midget Show relocated
to the United States, performing in vaudeville theaters across the nation. It
was under Singer’s U.S. contracts that Karl
went big time. He played in “Jumbo Show” in New York’s Hippodrome Theater. He
played several different roles in one of my personal favorites, the all
midget western “Terror of Tiny Town”. Other roles include: Billy Wilder’s “The
Lost Weekend”, Laurel and Hardy’s “Blockheads”, “They Gave Him a Gun” with
Spencer Tracy, “Bringing Up Baby” with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and he
even appeared later in life on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. However, Slover
is most well-known for his multiple parts in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz”.
He was a mere 21 when he auditioned for the "The Wizard of Oz".
At 4’4” tall Slover was the smallest midget on set. His biggest part in the
movie was that of the trumpeter, but he played a total of five roles. The four
other roles being: a Munchkin soldier, the sleepyhead boy in the nest of
Munchkin eggs, a singer who led Dorothy down the yellow brick road, and a
female villager to offset the predominantly male Munchkin cast. It was a grueling 2 month schedule with little pay (the dog
Toto made more money than the Munchkin actors) but he loved it. Slover has
stated that amazingly neither one of his parents or his sisters ever saw “The
Wizard of Oz”.
The owner of Singer’s Midgets, Leopold “Leo” von Singer, was
a controversial man. Actor Billy Curtis once said that Singer “had a reputation
for cheating his midgets”. Singer had, in fact, kept most of the money for each
of the Munchkins in the “The Wizard of Oz”, giving them each a mere $50 per week
for their work. While some troupe members spoke fondly of him and a number of them
affectionately referred to him as “Papa”, the troupe disbanded soon after the
start of World War II because his actors were angry over being robbed of pay.
This put Slover out of work. It was
at this time that he went to work for B.A. and Ada Slover in Tampa, Florida,
gained his citizenship, and changed his surname to Slover in honor of his new
managers. There he worked as a barker, a
ticket taker, and a bookkeeper in their carnival.
After the Slover’s carnival closed he worked mainly as a dog
trainer and animal performer until midget sideshows went out of fashion. “I first
started training Daschunds and all small breeds of dogs and even some police
dogs as guard dogs. Then, I mostly trained poodles. I didn’t believe in hitting
dogs. Once you hit them they won’t obey you. I tried to give them a snack when
they did what I told them. I also trained horses for a time. I used to train
dogs and perform them at nursing homes, schools, birthday parties and even
churches. But you can’t get any more jobs like that, so I gave it up.",
Slover said. Long after he retired, he continued to appear around the country
at festivals and events related to the “The Wizard of Oz”. He was one of seven
Munchkins at the 2007 unveiling of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
dedicated to the little people in the movie.
During his career in America, World War II raged across
Europe and it was ultimately due to his father’s abandonment that he had come
to the States, and thus his life was spared from the Nazis who routinely killed
people with disabilities. Slover was made all the more aware of this blessing when
he received a letter from a sister confined to a concentration
camp in Germany. His advice to her was to try to contact their father to get
her out and then go to the American Zone for safe harbor. Thirty seven years after being sold to the circus, Karl Slover returned to his birthplace and found his mother in the American Sector of Berlin. She had been mentally damaged from the horrors of war and had
almost no memory of her son and his early childhood.
Hypopituitarism causes many other adverse health conditions
than just dwarfism; however, Slover did not speak publically on what other problems
he may have been afflicted with during his life. One side effect of severe
hypopituitarism is a failure to complete puberty. While it has never been
confirmed whether or not Karl Slover went through puberty, as such information
would have been considered too personal in nature, especially during his time, it is known
that he grew several inches during his middle aged years. This would indicate
that he most likely did not, as a person’s bone plates fuse after the
completion of puberty and later growth would have not been possible. Slover had
said that he always wanted very badly to be of normal height and was happy with
the extra few inches of growth he achieved, but that he didn’t regret being a
midget performer either. "I got to be in the Wizard of Oz and got to meet some movie
stars and a lot of nice people." Slover said.
After staying positive and making the best of life as he
could in a time where his disability was highly shunned, Karl Slover passed
away on November 15, 2011 in Dublin, Georgia of cardiopulmonary arrest. He was
93 years old.
Now, nearly 100 years after the birth of Karl Slover, there
is a safe and largely effective cure for the disorder that
caused his form of dwarfism. Slover has stated many times that he just wanted
to be normal sized and had he been born today, he likely would have. This cure
is recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH) injections made synthetically from human
DNA. As the media runs articles on this treatment being abused by doping celebrities
and people desiring “designer children”, it’s important to remember that this
is a much needed cure to a potentially devastating disorder which causes many more adverse health effects than just short stature and dwarfism. In addition to increasing height in children
and adolescence, growth hormone has many other effects on the body:
- Increases calcium retention, and strengthens and increases the mineralization of bone
- Increases muscle mass through sarcomere hyperplasia
- Promotes lipolysis
- Increases protein synthesis
- Stimulates the growth of all body parts and internal organs except the brain
- Plays a role in homeostasis
- Reduces liver uptake of glucose
- Promotes gluconeogenesis in the liver
- Contributes to the maintenance and function of pancreatic islets
- Stimulates the immune system
So today, on the 94th birthday of Karl Slover, I
find it fitting to post his biography as my first blog post on Up The Beanstalk
in tribute to a man who lived, suffered, and overcame life's obstacles with pituitary dwarfism before a cure was available.
