Margaret Pellegrini - Telegraph At the time of filming, Margaret was 15 years old and only 3ft 5in tall, and did not attend high school because her mother feared that she would be bullied by the other pupils. "I was not big enough to partake in school activities," Margaret later recalled. Midgets were used as the school mascot in those days. I knew people who did that and felt like they were being treated not like a human being but like a rag doll. She was born Margaret Williams on September 23 1923 at Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was 13 she met members of Henry Kramer's Midgets at the Tennessee State Fair, where she was handing out free samples of crisps. They asked her if she had thought about showbusiness and made a note of her name and address. Two years later she was contacted by an agent in Hollywood, and she boarded a train for California. The filming of Munchkin Land took about eight weeks to complete. "All the Munchkin sets were built on sound stage 27 at MGM," she said. I stayed at the Culver City hotel close to the studio lot. She was paid $50 a week - "Toto the dog made more money than me," she declared. Toto made $125 a week, so he had a better agent than I did! Of the movie's star, Judy Garland, Margaret recalled: "[She] wasn't a big star when she made the movie. MGM had originally wanted Shirley Temple, but her studio, 20th Century Fox, wouldn't let her go. Judy was a typical teenager on the set, and would sit on the Yellow Brick Road and talk with me and some of the others instead of going to school. When the film premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1939, Margaret was working at the World Trade Fair in San Francisco with two of her fellow Munchkins, and she signed autographs for days on end after the organisers had erected enormous banners with the legend: "Meet the stars from Oz." Margaret then had a part alongside Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in Meet John Doe (1941) and in Tarzan's Secret Treasure (also 1941), starring Johnny Weissmuller. In the same year she married William Pellegrini, a prizefighter, and gave up acting while she brought up their son and daughter. She tried to resume her career in 1971, appearing in Johnny Got His Gun, with Timothy Bottoms, but no further parts were forthcoming, and she gave up acting for good. She took a number of jobs, including working as a Santa's helper at a Chicago department store and running a hot dog stand. On the 50th anniversary of the making of The Wizard of Oz she toured the United States with other surviving Munchkins, and throughout the 1990s appeared at numerous festivals celebrating the film. She remained in touch with her fellow Munchkins. "It was so uplifting for me," she said. Walking on to the set of Oz was the first time I had seen so many people like me. In those days we were called 'midgets"; now it's a much more politically correct 'people of restricted growth." Whatever the term, the name-calling was there as I was growing up, and I grew to ignore it. But back in 1939 as a teenager I stood side by side with dozens of people who didn't point or name-call. I cried with joy, and from that day on I was happy to be called Munchkin. There are now only two surviving Munchkins from the original 124: Jerry Maren, who is 93, and 95-year-old Ruth Duccini. Margaret Pellegrini, born September 23 1923, died August 7 2013