March misfits

**lesptr** · 03-25-2022, 08:26 AM

Originally Posted by getsome

It was quite an odd plot for a kids movie and I still don’t like those flying monkeys one bit…….It was a complete miracle that nobody died during filming….. The “Little People” hired to be Munchkins were all a bunch of crazed party animal drunks and since Judy Garland who played Dorothy Gale was only 5 feet tall there were many little hands constantly finding their way under her skirt, she complained but nobody cared….…MGM put all the little people up in a really nice hotel and every night the Police would have to break up drunken orgy’s and they would haul them off in pillow cases because the cuffs were too big and the studio would bail them out so they could continue filming the next day because it would be impossible to find any new munchkins on such short notice so what else could they do……Poor Judy Garland was only 16 and the studio was so obsessed with keeping her tiny so as to look like a 12 year old they would only let her eat chicken soup and coffee and fed her amphetamines so she could film for more than 48 hours at a time and she was smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day to suppress her appetite and the studio would supply her with sleeping pills so she could show up for work the next day………………Judy Garland died at age 47 from a drug overdose…..

Margaret Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West and in the scene when she is leaving Munchkin Land in a puff of smoke the trap door was slow to open and she suffered 2nd degree burns to her face and 3rd degree burns to both arms and hands and her stunt double Betty Danko almost lost a leg when she sat on a smoking broom stick to fly away and it exploded…..

Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the “Tin Man” but after a week of being painted with toxic aluminum dust paste he was poisoned and almost died in the hospital…….In the end it was a timeless great film but you look at it differently knowing what went on but I guess they did things a lot different in the movie business back then………..

I had no idea Hollywood was that bad back in those days. Seems to have only gotten worse.

**340pd** · 03-25-2022, 08:44 AM

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**340pd** · 03-25-2022, 08:47 AM

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**Armybrat** · 03-25-2022, 09:45 AM

After her ankle surgery in 2007 my wife went to a rehab facility for physical therapy. One of her fellow patients there was an old gent who was one of the last living “Munchkins”. Quite the nice fellow, and one morning the staff celebrated his birthday when he arrived for PT.
She says they never talked about the movie.
His family of little people lived in the town of Pflugerville, Texas.

**dustnchips** · 03-25-2022, 09:48 AM

first off I am ok. I was a little shaken up this morning as I was robbed at the shell gas station in North Palm Beach . After my hands stopped trembling I managed to call the police. They were quick to respond and calmed me down. My money is all gone. The police asked me if I knew who did it. I said yes...
It was pump number 3.