Wizard of oz hanging movie#

More than 3,200 costumes were made for the movie but the shabby coat worn by Frank Morgan’s Professor Marvel/The Wiz was found in a charity shop. Her face stayed green for weeks after shooting because of copper-based ingredients.Īnd it took a year for marks left by a mask to fade on Scarecrow actor Ray Bolger’s face. Actress Margaret Hamilton swallowed some and had to live on liquids for days. The Wicked Witch’s make-up was also toxic. Jack Haley, who took over the role, had an eye infection from aluminium paste, which turned out to be poisonous. “Midgets brandished knives and often had passions for larger personnel.”īuddy Ebsen, the first choice Tin Man, had an extreme reaction to aluminium dust in his make-up and nearly died. He had got plastered during lunch, fallen in the toilet and could not get out.”īert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion, said: “Many Munchkins made their living by panhandling, pimping and whoring Once when he was due on set, he went missing. He said: “You had to watch them all the time. The film’s make-up artist Jack Dawn recalled later how one German midget who called himself The Count even had to been rescued from a toilet bowl. 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.” 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.īut behind the tender magic of The Wizard of Oz lay real-life escapades that would shame even today’s movie In the studio they earned between £200 and £500 a week in 1939 – and they had giant party appetites. Daily Mail- AS the 80th anniversary of the classic, family, fantasy film approaches, it emerges that that the shoot itself was a LOT less wholesome than the movie itself.