Random In Old Hollywood Child Stars Were Forced To Do Drugs, And Other Awful Realities (13 items)

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  (#6) Judy Garland Was Sexually Assaulted On The Set Of 'The Wizard Of Oz'

  The indignities heaped upon Judy Garland in her early career are shockingly high in number. While still a teen during the filming of The Wizard of Oz, she was groped on set by some of the actors who portrayed Munchkins. Garland's third husband, producer Sid Luft, revealed the abuse decades later in a memoir. "[The actors who groped her] thought they could get away with anything because they were so small," Luft recalled. "They would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress. The men were 40 or more years old."
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  (#1) Judy Garland Was Forced To Develop An Eating Disorder To Maintain Her Weight

  It's reasonable to assume that few would call Judy Garland a "fat little pig in pigtails." But that's exactly what studio execs told the 14-year-old Garland when she first tried to enter show biz. After signing with MGM, Garland was immediately put on a strict diet and had her calories counted by the execs. In fact, sometimes, she would reach for a plate of food, only to have it swiftly taken from her.

  Whenever Garland snuck away from set to have a snack, execs would inform each other about her diet-breaking actions in internalized memos. When she was 18, to avoid this cheating, she was encouraged to smoke 80 cigarettes a day. She was even forced to pop pep pills to keep her awake and quell her appetite. However, this only perpetuated a cycle of binging and purging that likely contributed to her eventual death.
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  (#5) Tommy Kirk Was Fired After Walt Disney Found Out He Was Gay

  In the 1950s and '60s, Tommy Kirk was one of the most popular and prolific child actors of the era, a bona fide Disney superstar. But Kirk was far from happy. "I knew I was gay, but I had no outlet for my feelings," he said in a 1993 interview. "It was very hard to meet people, and, at that time, there was no place to go to socialize. It wasn't until the early '60s that I began to hear of places where gays congregated." At one of those places, he met a 15-year-old boy who he started dating. But when Walt Disney caught word of the relationship, he promptly fired Kirk. "I was caught having sex with a boy at a public pool in Burbank. We were both young, and the boy's mother went to Walt," he told Movieline. "I was quickly fired."
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  (#12) Baby LeRoy Was Terrorized By W.C. Fields

  At 16 months, Baby LeRoy became the youngest person ever to be put under a movie studio contract. He is most well-known for three W.C. Fields films he did in 1933 and 1934, but Fields was no fan of the infant star. Director Norman McLeod said, "He believed that Baby LeRoy was stealing scenes from him...He used to swear at the baby so much in front of the camera that I sometimes had to cut off the ends of the scenes in which they appeared." It's also rumored that Fields once spiked Baby LeRoy's baby bottle with gin in an attempt to quiet the fussy infant. Baby LeRoy retired at age three.
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  (#4) Shirley Temple Was Just 12 Years Old When She Almost Fell Victim To The Casting Couch

  Arthur Freed was a high-powered film producer during the Golden Age of Hollywood, with The Wizard of Oz, Easter Parade, and Singin' in the Rain among his many credits. Shirley Temple, arguably the most famous child star of all time, was looking to transition to more grown-up film roles when, as a 12-year-old in 1941, she was invited to Freed's office. In her autobiography, Temple recounted their meeting. "To visit an executive of such stature was enough to send my spirits soaring," she wrote. During the meeting, however, Freed had other things on his mind. He unzipped his pants and exposed himself to the pre-teen. Frightened and nervous by the unexpected turn of events, Temple says she started giggling, which enraged Freed and likely saved her from an even more traumatizing experience. "'Get out!' he shouted, unmindful of his disarray, imperiously pointing to the closed door. 'Go on, get out!'"
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  (#2) MGM Fed Judy Garland And Mickey Rooney A Constant Supply Of Drugs

  Mickey Rooney worked as a child actor at MGM alongside Judy Garland. The two were frequently paired together on screen as teenagers, but beneath their happy veneer was a very dark secret. The studio was feeding them a near-constant supply of pills to keep them in performance mode. Garland later said:

  They had us [Judy and Mickey] working days and nights on end. They'd give us pills to keep us on our feet long after we were exhausted. Then they'd take us to the studio hospital and knock us out with sleeping pills - Mickey sprawled out on one bed and me on another. Then after four hours, they'd wake us up and give us the pep pills again so we could work 72 hours in a row. Half of the time, we were hanging from the ceiling, but it was a way of life for us.

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