In the key scene in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland skips down the yellow brick road with her dog Toto and hundreds of helpful munchkins. But the reality of the shoot was far less happy, according to a newly discovered memoir by Garland’s former husband.

“They would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress,” wrote Sid Luft in the forthcoming posthumous book, Judy and I: My Life With Judy Garland. “The men were 40 or more years old. They thought they could get away with anything because they were so small.”

Garland was 17 when she made the film, which is often cited among the most influential movies of all time. She married Luft in 1952; they had two children before divorcing in 1965, four years before her death. Luft died in 2005.

The actors playing the munchkins have long been accused of behaving badly on set. In 1967, Garland said: “They were little drunks. They got smashed every night and the police used to scoop them up in butterfly nets.”

She also claimed she once went on a date with one of the actors. When her mother turned up as chaperone, the man said: “Fair enough, two broads for the price of one.”

Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion, corroborated the tales, writing: “Many munchkins made their living by panhandling, pimping and whoring. Midgets brandished knives and often had passions for larger personnel.”

According to producer Mervyn LeRoy, after shooting finished, “they had orgies in the hotel and we had to have police on about every floor. To make a picture like The Wizard of Oz, everybody had to be a little drunk with imagination.”

The salary paid to the actors has long been a matter of dispute, with many production staff claiming the figure was hundreds of dollars per week, while actor Jerry Maren claimed the figure was much lower: “How could you get drunk on $50 a week?” he said.

Maren also ascribed the unsavoury incidents to two specific actors. “There were a couple of kids from Germany who liked to drink beer. They drank beer morning, noon and night, and got in a little trouble. They wanted to meet the girls, but they were the only ones.”