Judy Garland Was Reportedly Molested by Munchkins on the Set of ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Munchkinland was a bad place.

Munchkinland wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A new memoir from the late ex-husband of The Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland (a/k/a Dorothy) claims that the then 16-year-old actress was repeatedly groped and harassed by several “munchkin” actors on set.

“They would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress,” Sid Luft writes in Judy and I: My Life With Judy Garland. “The men were 40 or more years old. They thought they could get away with anything because they were so small.”

The indecent behavior of the ostensibly helpful munchkins has long been the source of speculation and fascination. Producer Mervyn LeRoy said in 1939 that “they had sex orgies in the hotel, and we had to have police on just about every floor.” 

“They were very tiny, they were drunks,” Garland said in 1967. “They put them all in a hotel in Culver City, and they got smashed every night, and they had to pick them up in butterfly nets.”

We can only imagine what the Mayor of Munchkinland would have to say about all this.