HOLLYWOOD URBAN LEGEND: BUDDY EBSEN

URBAN LEGEND: Was Buddy Ebsen supposed to play The Tin Man in 1939's Wizard Of Oz

ANSWER: Definitely Yes!

As part of the shifting casting that often goes on in the lead-up to motion picture productions, the person first cast to play the Tin Woodman in MGM’s 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz was Ray Bolger. Buddy Ebsen (later to become familiar to generations of TV viewers as Jed clampett, the patriarch of The Beverly Hillbillies sitcom family), was originally intended for the role of the Scarecrow, but Ray Bolger eventually managed to convince MGM to allow him to swap parts with Ebsen (not, as is often claimed, because a clause in Bolger’s contract stipulated that he could play the part of the Scarecrow if MGM ever made The Wizard of Oz).

MGM initially had no idea exactly how to costume Ebsen for his role. They tried a variety of materials for his clothing (real tin, silver paper, cardboard covered with silver cloth) and makeup before finally settling on aluminum dust (applied over clown white) for the latter. When The Wizard of Oz began principal photography on 12 October 1938, Ebsen had finished all his costume and makeup tests, recorded his songs for the film soundtrack, and completed four weeks of rehearsal. Nine days later, he was rushed to the hospital and placed in an oxygen tent when his lungs failed. As Ebsen described the onset of symptoms in his autobiography:

"It was several days later when my cramps began. My first symptoms had been a noticeable shortness of breath. I would breathe and exhale and then get the panicky feeling I hadn’t breathed at all. Then I would gasp for another quick breath with the same result. My fingers began to cramp, and then my toes. For a time I could control this unusual cramping by forcibly straightening out my fingers and toes.

One night in bed I woke up screaming. My arms were cramping from my fingers upward and curling simultaneously so that I could not use one arm to uncurl the other. My wife tried to pull my arm straight with some success, just as my toes began to curl; then my feet and legs bent backward at the knees. I panicked. What was happening to me? Next came the worst. The cramps in my arms advanced into my chest to the muscles that controlled my breathing. If this continued, I wouldn’t even be able to take a breath. I was sure I was dying."

The aluminum dust used in Ebsen’s makeup had caused an allergic reaction or infection in his lungs that left him scarcely able to breathe, and he ended up spending two weeks in the hospital and another month recuperating in San Diego.

While Ebsen was recovering from his illness, producer Mervyn LeRoy hired Jack Haley to replace him. (The aluminum makeup was modified as well, changing from a powder that was brushed on to a paste that was painted on. Haley missed four days of filming when the new makeup caused an eye infection, but treatment was rendered in time to prevent any permanent damage.)

Because Ebsen had fallen ill away from the set, just before production was shut down for several days when original Oz director Richard Thorpe was fired, the rest of the cast was unaware of what happened to him. Haley and others assumed that he had been fired along with Thorpe. Although Ebsen was replaced before filming resumed, his voice can still be heard in the soundtrack, when the quartet of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion sings "We’re Off To See the Wizard"...

THE WIZARD OF OZ: 80 YEARS LATER

The much-loved film first appeared on August 25, 1939 at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, The Wizard of Oz was one of the best-loved Hollywood films ever made. It was the most expensive movie Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had produced to date and it made an international star of Judy Garland, who had begun life with the not wildly glamorous name of Frances Gumm, but endowed with a compelling singing voice. MGM signed her aged 13 in 1935 and did its utmost to pretend that she was still a young teenager when she played the role of the film’s 12-year-old heroine, Dorothy Gale, who with her dog Toto is blown away by a whirlwind to Oz in Munchkin Land. Following the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz, who she hopes will use his magic to send her home, she falls in with the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion (played by Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr, respectively), who also need the Wizard’s help. The travellers are welcomed to Munchkin Land by its inhabitants, the Munchkins, played by an assortment of dwarfs. The Wizard turns out to be a fake and Dorothy eventually returns home by clapping her hands three times and saying ‘There’s no place like home’.

In 1934, Samuel Goldwyn bought the film rights to the children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum which was originally published in 1900. Goldwyn paid $75,000 for the rights and was hoping to turn it into a major motion picture and considered casting Shirley Temple as Dorothy and Eddie Cantor as the Scarecrow. (The Oz story had been previously adapted into a Broadway musical, which debuted in 1903, and also several different versions of the story were made into silent films). 

At the beginning of 1938, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) studios bought the rights from Samuel Goldwyn. The screenplay went through several revisions before the final draft was approved in October 1938. The principal roles were cast with Judy Garland as Dorothy (she was only 17 years old at the time production started and after the movie was released it would make her a major motion picture star), Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Jack Haley as the Tin Man and Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West and Frank Morgan as the Wizard of Oz. Buddy Ebsen was originally cast in the role of the Tin Man; he filmed a few scenes and then was eventually replaced with Jack Haley. (For more interesting casting notes, please see “The Wizard of Oz” movie trivia section later in this post)
Sadly, there was to be no place like home for Garland herself. Her life was a miserable progression through mental problems, addiction to alcohol and drugs, failed relationships, suicide attempts and desperate unhappiness until death freed her when she was 47 in 1969....

A SUICIDE IN OZ

 

One of the most endearing films of all-time was 1939's The Wizard Of Oz. For over three generations, the film has been a beloved class of children and adults alike. I wanted to do some research into one of the more interesting rumors about the movie. There is a rumor that a jilted munchkin commited suicide, and it appeared in the film print. The so-called "munchkin suicide" scene occurs at the very end of the Tin Woodsman sequence, as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodsman head down the road on their way to the Emerald City.

The sequence begins with Dorothy and the Scarecrow trying to pick fruit from the talking apple trees, encompasses their discovery of the rusted tin man and their encounter with the Wicked Witch of the West (who tries to set the Scarecrow on fire), and ends with the trio heading off to Oz in search of the Wizard. To give the indoor set used in this sequence a more "outdoors" feel, several birds of various sizes were borrowed from the Los Angeles Zoo and allowed to roam the set. (A peacock, for example, can be seen wandering around just outside the Tin Woodsman's shack while Dorothy and the Scarecrow attempt to revive him with oil.) At the very end of this sequence, as the three main characters move down the road and away from the camera, one of the larger birds (often said to be an emu, but more probably a crane) standing at the back of the set moves around and spreads its wings. No munchkin, no hanging — just a big bird.

The unusual movement in the background of the scene described above was noticed years ago, and it was often attributed to a stagehand's accidentally being caught on the set after the cameras started rolling (or, more spectacularly, a stagehand's falling out of a prop tree into the scene). With the advent of home video, viewing audiences were able to rewind and replay the scene in question, view it in slow-motion, and look at individual frames in the sequence (all on screens smaller and less distinct than those of theaters), and imaginations ran wild. The change in focus of the rumor from a hapless stagehand to a suicidal munchkin (driven to despair over his unrequited love for a female munchkin) seems to have coincided with the heavy promotion and special video re-release of The Wizard of Oz in celebration of its 50th anniversary in 1989: someone made up the story of a diminutive actor who, suffering the pangs of unrequited love for a female "little person," decided to end it all right there on the set, and soon everyone was eager to share this special little film "secret" with others. Since (grossly exaggerated) tales of munchkin lechery and drunken misbehavior on the "Oz" set had been circulating for years (primarily spread by Judy Garland herself in television talk show appearances), the wild suicide story had some seeming background plausibility to it. (Other versions of the rumor combined elements from both explanations, such as the claim that the strange figure was actually a stagehand hanging himself.)

The logistics of this alleged hanging defy all credulity. First of all, the forest scenes in The Wizard of Oz were filmed before the Munchkinland scenes, and thus none of the munchkin actors would yet have been present at MGM. And whether one believes that the figure on the film is a munchkin or a stagehand, it is simply impossible that a human being could have fallen onto a set actively being used for filming, and yet none of the dozens of people present — actors, directors, cameramen, sound technicians, light operators — noticed or reacted to the occurrence. (The tragic incident would also had to have been overlooked by all the directors, editors, film cutters, musicians, and others who worked on the film in post-production as well.) That anyone could believe a scene featuring a real suicide would have been left intact in a classic film for over seventy years is simply incredible...

THE WIZARD OF OZ: MY FIRST CLASSIC MOVIE

So the 1939 legendary film The Wizard Of Oz has been written about endlessly. The film has been dissected and reviewed numerous times. However, if I am talking about a film that started my film passion then The Wizard Of Oz would be it. It is not my favourite movie, and at times I don't think it was that great, but I must have watched the movie once a year from the first time I can remember (around age 2 to now). I have watched the film annually for about 35 years, and now that I have children I have watched it even more times. When I was growing up, it seems like CBS always aired the movie around Easter, which is kind of odd because it is not an Easter movie. I remember watching The Wizard Of Oz at Easter and The Sound Of Music at Christmas!

Anyways, The Wizard Of Oz oddly was not a hit when audiences first saw the film in 1939. Although the film received largely positive reviews, it was not a box office success on its initial release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,000,000 budget. The film was MGM's most expensive production up to that time, but its initial release failed to recoup the studio's investment. Subsequent re-releases made up for that, however. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It lost that award to Gone with the Wind, but won two others, including Best Original Song for "Over the Rainbow".

Everyone knows the back stories about the film - how Shirley Temple was almost Dorothy, WC Fields was almost The Wizard, and Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be the Tin Man. Gale Sonderaard was also originally cast as The Witch, but she was too glamorous for a role that Margaret Hamilton was perfect in.

One of the most interesting stories from the film was the story about Frank Morgan's wardrobe. According to studio insiders, when the wardrobe department was looking for a coat for Frank Morgan, they decided that they wanted a once elegant coat that had "gone to seed." They went to a second-hand shop and purchased a whole rack of coats, from which Morgan, the head of the wardrobe department and director Fleming chose one they thought had the perfect appearance of shabby gentility. One day, while he was on set wearing the coat, Morgan turned out one of the pockets and discovered a label indicating that the coat had once belonged to Oz author L. Frank Baum. Mary Mayer, a unit publicist for the film, contacted the tailor and Baum's widow, who both verified that the coat had indeed once belonged to the writer. After filming was completed, the coat was presented to Mrs. Baum.

The Wizard Of Oz to me was an escape. My childhood was not the happiest one. I had two parents that were constantly at odds with each other, so they had little time for me. This movie, as a young boy, showed me that even though things were dark and gloomy in Kansas, there was a whole other life in beautiful technicolor. If I was Dorothy I would have wanted to stay in Oz, but the movie did show me that although I did not have the happiest times at home, that there were people like my grandparents and extended family that loved me. It also did seem like every year this film was shown on television that for the two hours at least, that there was no yelling and screaming, and we sat together watching this film fantasy on the screen.

Decades now since I first saw the film, I now have a family with little children, I not only make it a point to introduce them to classic films like The Wizard Of Oz, but I want them to realize that in their lives, there is no place like home...

JACK HALEY: AMERICA'S TIN MAN

The Wizard Of Oz (1939) is a movie that has captured the hearts of countless movie fans, young and old alive. Everyone has a favorite character from the movie. Even though the movie is remembered as a "Judy Garland" film, my favorite actor in the movie is the great Jack Haley as the Tin Man.

Jack was born John Joseph Haley on August 10, 1898. Haley started off as a vaudeville song-and-dance comedian in the early 1920s. One of his closest friends was fellow vaudeville alumnus Fred Allen, who would frequently mention "Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" on the air. In the early 1930s Haley starred in comedy shorts for Vitaphone in Brooklyn, New York. His wide-eyed, good-natured expression landed him supporting roles in many musical feature films like Poor Little Rich Girl (1936) with Shirley Temple, and the Irving Berlin musical Alexander's Ragtime Band (1937). Both Poor Little Rich Girl and Alexander's Ragtime Band were released by Twentieth Century-Fox, where Haley was under contract. Personally, I think Alexander's Ragtime Band was one of his best films, and he worked well as a fellow band member in a band that consisted of Tyrone Power and Don Ameche.

MGM hired Haley for The Wizard of Oz after another song-and-dance comic, Buddy Ebsen, who was originally set to play the Tin Man, had a near-fatal reaction from inhaling the aluminum dust makeup. This character was known as the Tin Woodman in the original book. The makeup was switched to a paste, to avoid risking the same reaction for Haley. The new makeup did cause an eye infection which caused Haley to miss four days of filming, but he received treatment in time to prevent permanent damage. Haley did not take to the makeup or to the discomfort of the costume very kindly. When being interviewed about the film years later by Tom Snyder, he remarked that many people had commented that making the film must have been fun. Haley's reply: "Like hell it was; it was work!" Haley's natural voice (which he used for the "Hickory" character) was moderately gruff. For the Tin Woodman, he spoke more softly, which he later said was the tone of voice he used when reading stories to his children. Oz was one of Haley's two MGM films (the other was Pick a Star, a 1937 Hal Roach production distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

Haley returned to musical comedies in the 1940s, and he made more movies for 20th Century Fox. One of my favorite movie appearances from that period was his supporting role in Moon Over Miami (1941). He was courted my Charlotte Greenwood and performed a pretty good jitterbug number. Most of his 1940s work was for RKO Radio Pictures. He was fired by the studio in 1947 when he refused to appear in a remake of RKO's old story property Seven Keys to Baldpate. Phillip Terry later took the role.

Jack pretty grew tired of the movie studio system and did much of his later work on television. He appeared throughout the 1970s on such shows as "Burke's Law" , "Make Room For Daddy", and "Marcus Welby MD". His last movie was a short appearance in his son's movie Norwood (1970) which starred Glenn Campbell.

Haley was married for 58 years to the same woman. He married Florence McFadden, a native of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania on February 25, 1921, and they remained married until his death. Flo Haley opened a successful beauty shop and counted many show people among her customers. (The establishment became known informally as "Flo Haley's House of Correction.") She died in 1996 at the age of 94. The couple had one son, Jack Haley, Jr.(1933-2001) (later a successful film producer) and one daughter, Gloria (1927-2010). Jack Haley, Jr. was married to Liza Minnelli, daughter of his father's Oz co-star Judy Garland, from 1974 to 1979.

Haley died suddenly of a heart attack on June 6, 1979 in Los Angeles, California, aged 80. Only a short time previously, he had made an appearance at that year's Academy Awards ceremony with Ray Bolger, who had played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. He was still active only a week prior to his death. Years after his death and decades after The Wizard Of Oz came out, Haley is not remembered too much as an actor. However, his role in the Tin Man is forever eched in the audience's mind and will be for decades and centuries to come...