Mick Brown
Friends of Dorothy
I once found myself sitting on the edge of the bed in a hotel room in Liberal, Kansas, talking with Lewis Croft, a midget who in 1939 had played the role of one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. Croft and a handful of other surviving Munchkins were the guests of honour at an ‘Oz’ festival (a ‘Best Dorothy’ competition, a man in a cowardly lion suit, etc). Croft was in his eighties, rheumy-eyed, confined to a wheelchair, and of a distinctly melancholic disposition, but at the mention of Judy Garland it was as if a ray of light had fallen into the room. ‘A really nice lady,’ he remembered warmly (although Garland was just sixteen when she made the film). ‘She wasn’t stuck up like you’d expect a movie star would be.’ He remembered that he had once bought Garland a chicken sandwich in the commissary; and on her birthday she had given each of the Munchkins an autographed picture, ‘and we were all happy for her’.
Years later, Garland would have less fond recollections of her co-stars, disparaging them all as ‘little drunks’ (she was one to talk, I hear you say). ‘They all got smashed every night and they picked them up in butterfly nets. I imagine they got residuals.’ (Actually, they didn’t.)
How nice exactly
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'In 2007, German scientists analysed the soil of this lunar landscape and found that 17 per cent of its weight was made up of arsenic. The ground wasn’t poisoned – it was poison.'
http://ow.ly/Ck7j50Er3mu
'Rivalries are intense and dangerous, and someone has to die.'
@NJCooper_crime on new thrillers by @HenryCPorter, @k_faulkner, @annafbailey, @mserinkelly, @JoelDicker, @AlanJParks, @whartonswords and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/april-2021-crime-round-up
This spring, give the gift of reading.
Give a friend a gift subscription to Literary Review for only £33.50.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/spring21/