They got smashed every night and the police used to scoop them up in butterfly nets.” Star Judy Garland went on a date with one of the most randy midgets, accompanied by her mum because she was only 17.īut that only prompted the little lothario to quip: “Fair enough, two broads for the price of one.”īy the time filming was over, Garland had seen enough of the Munchkins’ unsavoury amorous antics to go right off the idea of anything like a relationship.
He admitted: “To make a picture like The Wizard of Oz, everybody had to be a little drunk with imagination.” Tales of drunken dwarf love-ins and an “unholy assembly of pimps, hookers and gamblers” emerged from the Culver Hotel where they stayed during filming.Īfter the movie was finished, producer Mervyn LeRoy recalled: “They had orgies in the hotel and we had to have police on about every floor.” In the studio they earned between £200 and £500 a week in 1939 – and they had giant party appetites.
When Judy Garland’s innocent Dorothy Gale ran off to save her dog Toto, she embarked on an adventure that has enchanted generations of families, writes Lewis Panther in The People.īut behind the tender magic of The Wizard of Oz lay real-life escapades that would shame even today’s movie stars.Īs the classic Hollywood children’s fantasy approaches its 75th anniversary, the Sunday People has dug up some of its bizarre behind-the-scenes secrets.Īnd it is the midgets who played the Munchkins whose antics amaze most.
