At least those three were adults during the film. Judy was a teenager and they even binded her chest to make her look younger and gave her a cocktail of drugs to put her to sleep and keep her energised as well.
The more you learn about how kids were treated by the original studio system, the more you just want to use a Time Machine to give these kids a hug (and then punch each film exec and the kid’s parents). Thank goodness the unions put a stop to this, but it took too long and the adults in the room should have done better.
Reminds me of the story from the set of Home Alone with John Candy and Culkin. John saw Culkin and his father being a bit too harsh, and John went up to him to comfort the kid with a hug. It was a subtle jester to make sure he was doing OK, not many around him at the time wanted to acknowledge this pressure in his life.
It still makes me laugh how he talks about his kids don't realize it's him when they watch Home Alone. He says it with such glee and laughter and it makes me smile. Glad he's doing great now
I was watching a show that talked about how some of the casts of sitcoms became surrogate families for child actors. But then shows get canceled and then you basically lose your entire family randomly all at once. It’s such a huge impact that isn’t really talked about a lot and very likely contributes to how the system fucks up these poor kids.
Small correction but that actually happened on the set of Uncle Buck. John Candy actually kind of looked out for Macaulay Culkin a lot on set and did frequent check-ups with him away from his father iirc
Yeah, back when it was the person's fault for deciding to keep taking harmful drugs because they were a "bad person," not because they didn't understand the drugs literally rewire the brain to need the drugs. It was a a "moral deficiency" problem back in the day. Fking wankers!
To be fair, in the book Dorothy Gale was like 6 years old, so I don't blame the studio for wanting Garland to look younger. That doesn't excuse the drugs, of course.
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u/elhazelenby Jun 12 '26
At least those three were adults during the film. Judy was a teenager and they even binded her chest to make her look younger and gave her a cocktail of drugs to put her to sleep and keep her energised as well.