The uncomfortable truth of Judy Garland’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’ experience
When a film boasts three credited writers, an additional seventeen uncredited scribbling contributors, and cycles through four fired directors before landing on the then-obscure Victor Fleming to finish the project, it’s a clear sign of trouble in paradise. Sadly, the troubling chaos of The Wizard of Oz didn’t stop at the call sheet, either. Far from merely being a hectic shoot that reflected the slack creative milieu of Hollywood at the time, the despairing tales of a 16-year-old Judy Garland reveal the dark underbelly of cinema’s so-called Golden Age.
The accounts of Judy Garland‘s onset experiences go beyond glib tales of farce that the many fired directors are on-set skirmishes hint at and enter the rather more serious realm of being genuinely harrowing. Sadly, the seeds for her tragic on-set experiences were sewn long before the demanding production of the MGM epic. According to biographers, when Garland was just ten years of age, her pushy stage mother, Ethel Gumm, would cruelly drug her with stimulants so she would stay awake for 72-hour shoots, only to then force-feed her sleeping pills to knock her out when she wasn’t required on set.
This brought about medical dependencies that would prove fatal in later life when she succumbed to an accidental barbiturate overdose. In fact, many of the ills that plagued her later life can be traced back to her early career experiences.
The gruelling and despicable regime enforced upon her in childhood set a precedent that she was disposable and that exploitation was merely the harsh reality of life on the silver screen. This would later manifest in the making of The Wizard of Oz. This might have been her biggest epic, but that only meant that things were far worse for Garland.
In 2005, Sid Luft, Judy Garland’s ex-husband, had a posthumous memoir published that alleged that the child star was continually groped by the actors playing the munchkins. “They thought they could get away with anything because they were so small,” Luft wrote. “They would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress. The men were 40 or more years old.” This molestation was passed off as ‘antics’ by the adults who witnessed it on set and failed to intervene.
Disturbingly, although Luft’s memoir depicts a personal tale of how her experiences on set led to drug dependencies and suicidal tendencies, which, in turn, put a dreadful strain on their marriage, Garland would still fear speaking out in public even in adulthood.
In an interview with Jack Parr in 1967, she was asked about the munchkins in which she jokes about being asked to dinner by one of the 40-year-old actors and hints that “they got up to a lot” but ultimately remains the consummate performer and jokes about how they were drunk and had to be rounded up before a shoot by a runner with a butterfly net. However, for a brief second, she seems to almost be about to remark on their alleged assaults.
How old was Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz?
Garland won out over Shirley Temple and Deana Durbin for the role, who were both bigger stars at the time, and began filming in October 1938, a few months after her 16th birthday. In the near-seven-month shoot that followed, she not only had to put up with the munchkins but also roll around in snow made of asbestos, witnessing her castmates being hospitalised when the Wicked Witch of The West burst into flames. The Tin Man suffered a near fatal reaction to his make-up, routinely had her bust bandaged down painfully to make her look more flat-chested. The air of screen-stealing competitiveness meant that her only friend on set was a recently hospitalised witch.
The movie would prove to be the moment that her name was eternalised in Hollywood stardom, and yet it also marked the end of her career in earnest—a ‘career’ that began at the tender age of two. By the end of filming her big breakthrough, she was addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates, and the scars of the unrelenting experience marred her mental health. Studio executives had molested her, spies were sent to her home to ensure she was sticking to a regimented diet of coffee, cigarettes and chicken soup and contact with anyone her own age was limited.
This ordered cruelty had started early in Garland’s life, which led to a perpetuating cycle. After her first starring role in Pigskin Parade, she remarked: “I was frightful. I was fat – a fat little pig in pigtails.” This self-judgement was no doubt a result of MGM head Louis B Meyer referring to her as “my little hunchback” and the constant application of prosthetics, a corset and a diet that professionals would deem deadly by current medical practices that were enforced upon her.
As a biographer, Lauren Becall states: “From childhood, Judy was placed on drugs – to lose weight or to go to sleep or to wake up. And once you get hooked on pills… it obviously affected her.” Moreover, much of this regiment was enforced as a way to beautify a child, which is not only contextually problematic in regards to the sexualisation of a minor but also placed troubling ideals upon a child.
This is not just an illustration of Hollywood’s dark early years but a toxic example of how the chaotic creative process of filmmaking can be used to mask dehumanising crimes that occur therein. The movie might be over 80 years old, but more still needs to be done on this front to this day, where the ‘artistic practices’ deployed in search of cinematic gold often come at a heavily cloaked cost.
