68 years after musical The Wizard of Oz first hit theaters, the little people who were featured as the munchkins have been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The elderly actors, some well into their 80s, beamed as they finally received recognition for their role in one of the most well-known and beloved movies of the 20th century.

Seven actors came to the ceremony, and arrived up in a horse-drawn carriage, some in costume and two in wheelchairs. They were accompanied by a marching band. The story of how they were honored after all this time is touching:

Seven of the surviving actors who played the inhabitants of Munchkinland in the 1939 classic attended the ceremony, arriving in a horse-drawn carriage and trailed by a marching band.

A yellow carpet, resembling the film’s yellow brick road, led them to the stage. One tap-danced, and another sang.

“We love you; you have touched our hearts,” former Munchkin Mickey Carroll, 88, told the crowd.

Carroll was joined by former Munchkin colleagues Ruth Duccini, Jerry Maren, Margaret Pellegrini, Meinhardt Raabe, Karl Slover and Clarence Swensen.

“I’m as proud today as my mother would have been,” said Joey Luft, the son of Judy Garland. Garland, who played the movie’s wide-eyed orphan, Dorothy Gale, died of a drug overdose in 1969.

Carroll was one of more than a hundred adults and children who were recruited for “Oz” to play the natives of what author L. Frank Baum called Munchkin Country in his 1900 book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

They only made $125 a week while filming, followed by decades of recognition, Carroll told The Associated Press by phone before the ceremony.

“I’m not a Munchkin, I’m an entertainer,” Carroll noted. “But the movie is great because we all grew up with it. … It never dies.”

[AP Story found at Yahoo! News]

I love this story! It just makes you wonder what took so long. The Victoria’s Secret models got a star on the walk of fame before the munchkins did.

Here’s the Munchkin Parade from the Wizard of Oz:

Thanks to PRPhotos for these pictures of the ceremony yesterday. The taller gentleman with them is Johnny Grant, who is the honorary mayor of Hollywood.