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...

FIFTEEN FACTS ABOUT THE WIZARD OF OZ

When I was a child, I would watch the 1939 classic The Wizard Of Oz around Easter every year. (I am not sure why it was always on then). I grew up with the Flying Monkeys, Munchkins, and green witches. It is hard to believe that this film is nearly 75 years old. The movie was successful when it first came out, but it has become one of the greatest movie classics of all-time. Here are fifteen interesting facts about the movie:

1. Judy Garland had a bad case of the giggles while filming the scene where she slaps the Cowardly Lion. Take after take, director Victor Fleming's patience wore thin. Taking Judy quietly to the side, and without saying a word he suddenly slapped her! She then returned to her place with the cast and did the scene in one take.

2. Judy Garland was a well-developed 16 yr. old when she was filming "The Wizard Of Oz". To disguise this fact, the costume department design a tight-fitting corset-type device to give her a more child-like figure.

3. The white blouse and blue/white checkered skirt Judy Garland's character wore in the movie wasn't white and blue..it was pink and blue. White doesn't film well. So what looked like white was actually a pale pink.

4. Margaret Hamilton received second- and third-degree burns when filming the sequence where she disappeared in a cloud of smoke after first meeting Dorothy. As she was dropping through the trap door, the timing was off and part of her costume caught fire. Her burns caused her to miss six weeks of filming.

5. When Margaret Hamilton returned to the set after recovering from her burns, she was to do the scene where she flies on the broomstick that spews smoke. She refused to do the shot, saying it was too dangerous. Stand-In Betty Danko did the shot instead, getting seriously injured in the stunt.

6. Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion's costume weighed 90 lbs.

7. Part of Bert Lahr's make-up consisted of a brown paper bag. Not being able to eat while in make-up he had to have only soup and milkshakes for lunch and dinner when filming. This got old. One day he had enough of "liquid meals" and enraged the director by taking a full lunch, eating whatever he wanted. He then insisted all of his facial make-up be reapplied which was very time consuming. Lahr won the battle and had his make-up redone each day after eating.

8. Ray Bolger was a smoker. Twice while filming he was smoking during a break; cigarette ash fell onto some of the straw of his costume, catching him on fire!

9. Tin Man, Jack Haley had a slight problem with his stiff-limbed costume. It seems he would occasionally fall while in costume and would lay on his back like a turtle until someone could help him up!

10. When the movie script was being adapted from the book, the role of the Wizard was written with W.C. Fields in mind for the part.

11. For the shot of Dorothy's house falling out of the sky, a miniature house was positioned and dropped onto a painting of the sky that had been placed on the stage floor and filmed from above. It was then reversed to make it appear the house was falling towards the camera.

12. If you'll look closely at the wallpaper in Dorothy's bedroom wallpaper, you'll see the design is of poppies.

13. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM is responsible for coming up with the the famous ruby red slippers. In the book, the slippers were silver.

14. Louis B. Mayer's motivation for doing"The Wizard of Oz" was to trump Walt Disney's award-winning movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".

15. Two white palomino ponies were painted with thicken Jell-O powder to get the beautiful effect for "The horse of a different color" shots as Dorothy and her friends are taken through the Emerald City. Shooting had to be done quickly because the horses would constantly try to lick their fur to get a sweet treat!

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...

BORN ON THIS DAY: RAY BOLGER

Today marks the birthday of the Scarecrow from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), Ray Bolger. Bolger was born Raymond Wallace Bolger on January 10,1904 to an Irish Catholic family in Dorchester, a section of Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Anne (née Wallace) and James Edward Bolger. He was inspired by the vaudeville shows he attended when he was young to become an entertainer himself.

He began his career in a vaudeville tab show, creating the act "Sanford & Bolger" with his dance partner. In 1926, he danced at New York City's Palace Theatre, the top vaudeville theatre in the country. His limber body and ability to ad lib movement won him many starring roles on Broadway in the 1930s. Eventually, his career would also encompass film, television and nightclub work.

Bolger's film career began when he signed a contract with MGM in 1936. His best-known film appearance prior to The Wizard of Oz was The Great Ziegfeld (1936), in which he portrayed himself. But he also appeared in Sweethearts, (1938) the first MGM film in Technicolor, starring Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, and Bolger's future Oz co-star, Frank Morgan, as well as the 1937 Eleanor Powell vehicle Rosalie, which also starred Eddy and Morgan.

Bolger toured in the USO shows with Joe E. Lewis in the Pacific Theater during World War II, was featured in the United Artists war-time film Stage Door Canteen (probably the best filmed example of his dancing and comic style that made him such a big Broadway star) and returned to MGM for a featured role in The Harvey Girls (1946).

Following Oz, Bolger moved to RKO. In 1946, he recorded a children's album, The Churkendoose, featuring the story of a misfit fowl ("part chicken, turkey, duck, and goose") who teaches kids that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it all "depends on how you look at things".

Bolger starred in several films, including Walt Disney's 1961 remake of Babes in Toyland, and his own sitcom, Where's Raymond?, also known as The Ray Bolger Show, from 1953-1955. He also made frequent guest appearances on television, including the episode "Rich Man, Poor Man" of the short-lived The Jean Arthur Show, a CBS sitcom which aired in 1966. In 1985, he and Liza Minnelli, the daughter of his Oz co-star Judy Garland, starred in That's Dancing, a film also written by Jack Haley, Jr., the son of Tin Man actor Jack Haley. He also appeared in Little House On The Prairie as Toby Noe.

Bolger's Broadway credits included Life Begins at 8:40, On Your Toes, By Jupiter, All American, and Where's Charley?, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical and in which he introduced "Once in Love with Amy", the song often connected with him. He repeated his stage role in the 1952 Technicolor film version of the musical. In his later years, he danced in a Dr Pepper television commercial. He had a recurring role as the father of Shirley Partridge (played by Shirley Jones) on The Partridge Family.

Bolger died of bladder cancer on January 15, 1987 in Los Angeles, California, five days after his 83rd birthday. He was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City in the Mausoleum, Crypt F2, Block 35. He was survived by his wife of over 57 years, Gwendolyn Rickard. They had no children. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving main cast member of The Wizard of Oz.

An editorial cartoon on January 17, 1987, two days after his death, by Chicago Tribune artist Dick Locher, depicted the Oz cast dancing off into the setting sun and toward the Emerald City, with the Scarecrow running to catch up...