Karl "Charlie" Becker was a German-American actor. He was 3'9" in height, and is probably best known for appearing as the Mayor of Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)

The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

(1939).

Becker was born near Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 in the town of Muschenheim. As a teenager, he worked as a butcher

Butcher

A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...

, but often struggled to use the knives and other equipment, and was ridiculed by his fellow workers. When he was about nineteen, he began performing in travelling "midget

Midget

A midget is a short person with relatively average bodily proportions in comparison with other human beings. The term is often improperly used to describe a person with the medical condition dwarfism. The two terms are often used synonymously because both terms originate as words defining small...

 shows", and eventually joined the Singer Midgets, a famous troupe led by Leo Singer

Leo Singer

Leopold von Singer was the manager of the Singer Midgets, a popular vaudeville group in the first half of the twentieth century.Singer was born to a prominent family in Vienna, Austria...

 of Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. The Singer Midgets moved to the United States during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, and became popular on the vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 circuits. Becker became friends with George Burns

George Burns

George Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television and movies, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became...

, Will Rogers

Will Rogers

William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....

, and other stars of the time.

Becker appeared in a few films during the 1920s and 1930s. These included Spangles (1926), The Terror of Tiny Town

The Terror of Tiny Town

The Terror of Tiny Town is a 1938 American film produced by Jed Buell, directed by Sam Newfield, and starring Billy Curtis. It is the world's only musical Western with an all-midget cast....

(1938), and, most notably, The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which he played the Mayor of Munchkinland. He was chosen for the role because of his large belly, round face, and facial hair, which were thought to be mayoral features. Because of his thick German accent, however, his voice had to be dubbed. On the set of The Wizard of Oz, Becker met his future wife, Jessie Kelley, who played another Munchkin. The two married in 1940, and settled in California, where they sometimes worked as stand-in

Stand-in

A stand-in for film and television is a person who substitutes for the actor before filming, for technical purposes such as lighting.Stand-ins are helpful in the initial processes of production. Lighting setup can be a slow and tedious process; during this time the actor will often be somewhere else...

s for child actors. Later in his life, Becker opened his own sausage business.

Becker died of a stroke in California on December 28, 1968. Some controversy emerged in 1984 when obituaries for the actor Prince Denis

Prince Denis

Prince Denis was an American actor with dwarfism, best known for his role as the Sergeant-at-Arms in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz".- Biography :...

stated that he had played the Mayor of Munchkinland. In reality, Denis had played the Sergeant-at-Arms.