Under the Rainbow 1981

1938, on the eve of World War II, unfolds a curious, dreamlike tale that flits between the dusty plains of Kansas and the glittering backlots of Hollywood. In Kansas, Rollo Sweet is a little person living in a homeless shelter, clinging to a big dream of making it in the movies. As residents crowd around a radio to hear an address from President Roosevelt, the signal is weak and uncertain, turning a quiet moment into a chorus of static and hope. Rollo climbs to the roof to fix the antenna, only to lose his footing and tumble downward, setting off a chain of events that will blur the line between fantasy and waking life.

Across the country, in Culver City, California near the legendary MGM Studios, a sprawling, motley group checks into a hotel that buzzes with rumor, bustle, and a strange sense of destiny. Among the guests is [Annie Clark], a long-suffering employee at MGM, accompanied by her assistant Homer. Also present are an Austrian duke [The Duke], his duchess [The Duchess], and their Secret Service escort [Bruce Thorpe]; a Nazi secret agent, [Otto Kriegling], and his Japanese contact [Nakomuri]; a comically large crowd of Japanese photographers; and, crucially, around 150 little people including Rollo, who are quietly playing their part in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. The hotel’s fate has been left to the hands of the owner Lester Stahl’s inept nephew [Henry Hudson] while the boss is away, creating a simmering tension that undercuts every scene with a touch of farce and danger.

The lives of these disparate figures start to collide through a web of mistaken identities and shuffled perceptions. Kriegling stubbornly assumes his Tokyo contact must be among the photographers, while Nakomuri, who only knows that his contact is a little person, believes the occult meeting must be hidden among the Munchkins. Nazi maps slip into Annie’s copy of the Wizard of Oz script, raising the stakes of every page turn. An assassin on the Duke and Duchess’s trail strikes, killing Akido. Homer, convinced Kriegling is a fellow Munchkin, sweeps him away to the studio’s costume and makeup shop, turning a simple misidentification into a comic rush of chaos. The Munchkins’ unrestrained revelry and drunken antics only amplify the confusion, dragging everyone into a tailspin of misunderstandings and unintended consequences.

As tensions rise, Kriegling corners Annie, Thorpe, the Duke, and the Duchess in a tense hotel room, where the assassin makes one last bid to seize the map. In a twist that seams action with misdirection, Nakomuri raises his camera and fires—though not with a lens, but with a shot that echoes the danger of a hidden weapon. The resulting chaos leaves no one untouched as fear, bravado, and bad luck collide. Kriegling demands the map, and Thorpe reveals it is hidden in a locket on the Duchess’s dog’s collar, a clue that sends everyone scrambling. The chase spills from the hotel into the studio lot, where the dog’s errant sprint pulls Kriegling, Sweet, and a pursuing cadre of Munchkin actors into a disruption that halts the filming of Gone with the Wind.

The pursuit climbs toward a dramatic crescendo: Kriegling seizes the locket and attempts to slip away in a vintage bus, with Sweet追逐 him in a horse-drawn carriage. The two crash in a collision that seems almost cinematic in its slapstick gravity, leaving the fates of both men uncertain and the onlookers stunned. When the dust clears, Sweet awakens back in Kansas, the glow of the dream receding as vividly as a curtain falling. The story folds in on itself, revealing that the entire adventure was a dream born from the shelter’s shared memory, populated by the faces of the people who inhabit it.

Yet as in the world of The Wizard of Oz, the dream carries a bittersweet truth: the shelter’s residents see themselves reflected in these fantastical roles, each name and silhouette a whisper of longing and possibility. And just as the rainbow-lit bus in the tale implies a route to someplace better, a fresh busload of little people arrives, signaling that Sweet’s path to Hollywood is still very much ahead—and that the dream, in its own way, is not entirely a dream at all.