13. The Munchkins were changed considerably for the movie version in 1939
In the Oz books the Munchkins, “seemed about as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age…” The literary Munchkins are presented as being older than Dorothy, and dressed in varying shades of blue, the color of the Land of Oz’s eastern regions. Obviously for the film’s producers, creating the Munchkins created problems. To help solve them they contacted an entrepreneur named Leo Singer, the manager of a traveling vaudeville troupe known as Singer’s Midgets.
Singer provided both members of his troupe (for which he kept a portion of their salaries) and recruited others from his contacts across the industry. One, Jerry Maren (he handed Dorothy the lollipop as a member of the Lollipop Guild) later claimed that the actors who portrayed Munchkins in singing or speaking roles were paid $125 per week. Those who were just extras were paid far less. The fact that little people were hired to portray the Munchkins is well known, but several children were also hired to serve as set extras to ensure that Munchkin City was well-populated when Dorothy dropped in.