el mago de oz
Here's a lengthy Washington Post article on the few surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. Six of the ten still tour, appearing at events like Minnesota's annual Judy Garland festival:
This is fame in America. Fame in America is being a 78-year-old great-grandmother wearing a turquoise flowerpot on your head and having men, women and children twice your size approach you with wonder. It is being an 82-year-old naturalized citizen whose father once buried you in sand to make you grow and then sold you to a troupe of traveling midgets—and who now gets picked up in a limo and ferried to places where people pay $5 for your autograph.
In former years the Munchkins would have been defined as midgets, not dwarfs: meaning that they lack human growth hormone but are otherwise proportional. In recent years, however, identity politics has combined with a shift in scientific attitudes to produce a new nomenclature. Midgets are now referred to as "pituitary dwarves," identifying the hormonal cause of their malady, while other dwarves suffer from chondrodysplasia, or abnormal bone growth. Pituitary dwarfism is now usually treatable with human growth hormone, so the Munchkins truly are a dying breed.
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