Judy Garland is known to have walked down the Yellow Brick Road with the Munchkins following closely behind in one of the most popular movies of all time The Wizard of Oz. However, her ex-husband now claims that in real-life the Munchkins repeatedly sexually harassed her on set.
“They would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress … The men were 40 or more years old,” Sid Luft wrote in a memoir titled “Judy and I: My Life with Judy Garland.”
“They thought they could get away with anything because they were so small,” he said.
Sid Luft was Garland’s third husband, and they married in June 1952 and had two children together before they got divorced 13 years later.
Garland was 17 when The Wizard of Oz hit theaters in 1939. Garland revealed the Munchkin actors‘ behavior in a 1967 interview. “They were little drunks … They got smashed every night, and they picked them up in butterfly nets,” she said.
While there have been rumors of drunken parties and alleged sex parties, the last surviving Munchkin has denied the allegations.
“How could you get drunk on $50 a week?” he asked, according to People. “There were a couple of kids from Germany who liked to drink beer. They drank beer morning, noon and night, and got in a little trouble. They wanted to meet the girls, but they were the only ones.”
Garland died in 1969. The coroner explained that the death was “an incautious self-overdosage” of barbiturates.
What do you think? Discuss this story with fellow Project Casting fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @projectcasting.
