Irvine Welsh takes on raunchy munchkins
By Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop. Posted: Sunday, July 23 2006 .
Don't let the cute suits fool you... Three of the remaining nine original munchkin actors from The Wizard of Oz. (Photo: Reuters)
When filming The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland and producer Mervyn Le Roy commented on "dwarf sex parties" and "orgies and drunkenness" among the munchkin actors.
Almost 70 years later, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh writes that allegations like those have inspired him to try his hand at a play:
"We decided that Babylon Heights would be about the 'little people' of Oz, the munchkin performers. There is an old myth that in the film's original print, during the Tin Woodsman scene, the small shadowed figure you can see is actually a dead munchkin hanging from a tree. The official line was that it was a dead bird. Our starting point was to take this myth as a reality."
Already before its Dublin premiere, the on-stage dwarf debauchery has faced exploitation claims from an Irish little peoples' group, but Welsh has a different take on the sex, drugs and rock and roll.
"Well, what else were they supposed to do? The small people, billeted separately from the other performers, were under de facto house arrest in their Culver City hotel. They were taken from there directly on to the studio set, and then taken straight back. The actors have since claimed, in accounts of that period and biographies, to have been paid far less than the other actors, even less than the dog playing Toto.
But little people don't get too much of a say in this production either:
"We decided not to use persons of restricted growth as actors. Instead, we opted to deploy regular-sized performers and outsized furnishings and fittings. This was the hardest call, and it took a lot of soul-searching. But we decided we didn't want to have a situation whereby sensationalist elements of the media might portray the experience as a bunch of 'normal-sized' people sitting in a theatre watching 'dwarfs' perform. Crucially, we wanted the audience to feel empathy with the performers, to feel that they, too, were small and locked into an outsized, inhospitable space with larger, often menacing figures lurking outside."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200607/s1693974.htm
Don't let the cute suits fool you... Three of the remaining nine original munchkin actors from The Wizard of Oz. (Photo: Reuters)
When filming The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland and producer Mervyn Le Roy commented on "dwarf sex parties" and "orgies and drunkenness" among the munchkin actors.
Almost 70 years later, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh writes that allegations like those have inspired him to try his hand at a play:
"We decided that Babylon Heights would be about the 'little people' of Oz, the munchkin performers. There is an old myth that in the film's original print, during the Tin Woodsman scene, the small shadowed figure you can see is actually a dead munchkin hanging from a tree. The official line was that it was a dead bird. Our starting point was to take this myth as a reality."
Already before its Dublin premiere, the on-stage dwarf debauchery has faced exploitation claims from an Irish little peoples' group, but Welsh has a different take on the sex, drugs and rock and roll.
"Well, what else were they supposed to do? The small people, billeted separately from the other performers, were under de facto house arrest in their Culver City hotel. They were taken from there directly on to the studio set, and then taken straight back. The actors have since claimed, in accounts of that period and biographies, to have been paid far less than the other actors, even less than the dog playing Toto.
But little people don't get too much of a say in this production either:
"We decided not to use persons of restricted growth as actors. Instead, we opted to deploy regular-sized performers and outsized furnishings and fittings. This was the hardest call, and it took a lot of soul-searching. But we decided we didn't want to have a situation whereby sensationalist elements of the media might portray the experience as a bunch of 'normal-sized' people sitting in a theatre watching 'dwarfs' perform. Crucially, we wanted the audience to feel empathy with the performers, to feel that they, too, were small and locked into an outsized, inhospitable space with larger, often menacing figures lurking outside."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200607/s1693974.htm
