There were also rumors – thanks to the film’s stars – that the dwarfs who played the denizens of Munchkinland ran amok in their spare time.
“They were kind of drunk,” Garland said in a 1967 interview with Jack Paar. “They were being smashed every night and the police were scooping them up with bug nets.”
Jerry Mullen, who played the green plaid-wearing member of the Lollipop Guild and was the last surviving Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz who died in 2018 at age 98, objected to the characterization of him and his co-stars.
“That’s what Judy said that day, depending on the drugs and booze,” Ms. Mullen wrote in her 2006 memoir, “Short and Sweet: The Life and Times of a Lollipop Munchkin,” co-authored with Stephen Cox. “She left behind a legacy of lies about us.”
And among the 120 or so little people in the film, he writes, “there were some kids from Germany who liked to drink beer.” “I drank beer morning, noon and night and got into a bit of trouble. I wanted to see the girls, but they were the only ones.”
Margaret Pellegrini, who played the munchkin villager, had fond memories of the experience. “My father worked in a hotel and earned about $5 a week. I was paid $50 a week,” she recalled. “It took eight weeks to create the scenes for Munchkinland, and then we spent a month in Hollywood sightseeing.”
