I Will Regret This Later: I'd Like To Thank All The Little People

Every day I listen to a podcast called "The Mike O'Meara Show". If you grew up in the DC metro area, you may remember Mike O'Meara from an afternoon radio show he used to host called "The Don and Mike Show". After being fired from CBS, Mike decided to set up a studio in his living room and he (and a few of the old gang, plus some welcomed additions) podcast from there for an hour every Monday through Friday. If you're looking for a good comedy podcast, you should definitely give them a try. The guys are very funny and have an excellent camaraderie. It's definitely worth checking them out with an (always) free download from iTunes.

This morning I was listening to the show while on my way to work. In between the segments, they always play short snippets of music and, randomly, one of the songs this morning was “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead”. One of the guys- Robb Spewak- is an enthusiast of old movies and he was talking. During the song, he began to talk about the men and women- and children- that played The Munchkins, who were known as “Singer Midgets”. No joke- that’s how they’re billed--

I agree. Ray Bolger was a total "Hunk".

It’s not a huge surprise that I am a devoted fan of "The Wizard of Oz". I’ve read the books, I’ve seen the documentaries, I’ve watched it with every possible recorded commentary- which is why I was surprised this morning when I learned something new.

According to Robb, it would be almost impossible to find enough little people to play The Munchkins if the film was made today. Advances in modern medicine have caused a decline in adult dwarfism through various complex hormone treatments. I don’t feel like researching this in a medical journal, so let’s all just accept that as fact, shrug our shoulders and move on.

I prefer these Munchkins anyway.

The conversation continued to discuss the ensemble of Oompa Loompas in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. (I would specify “the 1971 version” but since the 2005 version was renamed “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, you should already know which I’m talking about.) Robb was saying that to get the feeling of old Europe, the movie was filmed in Munich, Germany. Most of the cast were Enlgish, but the producers had to go outside of Germany to recruit enough little people to play the Oompa Loompas. “Why,” you may ask? Well, once again, we get to blame the Nazi’s.

"I hate Jews UND CHOCOLATE!"

That’s right! In order to promote eugenics for the Aryan race, all those suffering from hereditary defects were not only deemed yucky to look at by Hitler, they were also accused costing the Reich good money if they were to be kept alive. So, in 1970, when “Willy Wonka” was filming, the little people that would have been of-age to play the roles of those frightening orange morality monsters were already long dead. And since dwarfism can be an hereditary condition, future generations of little people were never spawned. Let’s face it- if the Nazi’s did one thing right, it was a-murderin’.

This story seemed too crazy to believe, so I tried to locate another source for the information. And sure enough, this story is listed in the "Willy Wonka" Trivia page on imdb, which also goes on to say:

Many of the people cast as Oompa Loompas (German or otherwise) did not speak English fluently, if at all. This is why some appear to not know the words to songs during the musical numbers.