Former KTVU reporter, ‘Wizard of Oz’ Munchkin Betty Ann Bruno of Sonoma dies at 91

It’s impossible to tie up Betty Ann Ka’ihilani Bruno’s legacy in one sentence.

She was possibly the last-remaining actor from the cherished 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” She was an Emmy Award-winning reporter for KTVU. She was an avid hula dancer who taught the art form across Sonoma County via her nonprofit Hula Mai.

Bruno died following a dance performance on Sunday. She was 91.

Just last month, the 2020 Sonoma Treasure Artist traveled to New York to be celebrated in one of the country’s largest “Wizard of Oz” festivals.

“I am still processing the fact that all these accolades, all the fan mail, all the fuss, really have nothing to do with me personally,” she told the Index-Tribune in June. “They aren’t about the life I have had or the things I have accomplished. I just happen to be the icon, if you will, of the most-beloved picture on the planet.”

She was 7 when she was cast in the historic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios movie as one of the Munchkins, who were first introduced to Dorothy (played by Judy Garland), soon after her house touched down in Munchkinland.

Although Bruno had no lines, the role would become a defining point in her life, and was celebrated up until her death.

“Oz has been a presence in my life, my whole life, a huge presence,” she told a reporter for The Press Democrat in 2019.

Standing at 5 feet, 1 inch tall as an adult, Bruno — as a child in the “Wizard of Oz” — was one of about 10 young girls of average height who sang and danced with more than 100 little people in the bright and colorful Munchkinland.

“I felt as if I had gone into another world,” said Bruno, whose scenes were filmed during late 1938, during the Great Depression. “That was like dying and going to heaven. The set was so brilliant.”

“We were little bodies in the background,” she said in the 2019 interview. The girls were part of the crowds gathered in scenes and peeking out from thatched-roof Munchkin huts; only the adult Munchkin actors had speaking roles and close-ups.

Bruno was one of four girls selected to appear in a nest as Munchkin hatchlings, dozing and yawning in oversized cracked eggs. The scene was cut and refilmed after an agent for the diminutive adult actors protested that child Munchkins weren’t contracted for any feature shots.

Born in Hawaii and raised in California, she attended Stanford University where she discovered her love of journalism.

She spent more than 20 years with Oakland’s KTVU, winning three Emmy Awards. She covered the Oakland Hills Fire in 1991, a blaze that destroyed Bruno’s own home.

While working for KTVU, she fell in love with her cameraman, Craig Scheiner. They married in 1977, and spent 46 years as husband and wife, and had three sons.

Upon her retirement, she moved to El Verano and threw herself into hula, a longtime passion from her Hawaiian roots.

She and Scheiner founded Hula Mai, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching and spreading awareness for the art of hula dancing.

Scheiner posted on Facebook that Bruno “had just finished dancing Pua Mana” on Sunday when she developed a bad headache. They headed to the emergency room, where she suffered a heart attack.

This is a developing story, check back for more details.