A Deep Dive into the Horror-filled Production of The Wizard of Oz (1939)

in the year 1900 in chicago a struggling writer named l frank baum published the first book in the wizard of oz series he had long been known as a great spinner of yarns inviting local children over to sit with his own kids and hear him tell wild and fantastical stories wizard of oz is what would finally bring him success especially after its adaptation into a stage play and baum would go on to write 14 oz books in total the play and books shaped the imaginations of an entire generation of children many of whom went on

to become major players in the newly established film industry so it's no wonder that sooner or later mgm would acquire the rights to the book and set out to adapt it to the silver screen the wizard of oz is arguably one of the most legendary films of all time its visual iconography its pop cultural impact its nostalgic value its influence on literally every movie and musical and movie musical that came after it all were almost completely unprecedented by nearly everyone involved in its production much in the same way that the early silent filmmakers had no

idea that they were making history as the creators of modern cinema and thus failed to properly value and preserve the art they made mgm had no way of knowing just how massive oz would eventually become of course the creators knew they were working on a huge bombastic film and the extravagant promotion campaign by mgm upon its release is evidence enough that the studio wanted oz to be spectacular and knew that it very much could be in hollywood's early years a studio would make dozens and dozens of films every year the wizard of oz was an

unusually expensive film with a total expenditure of 2.7 million dollars though nothing close to the most expensive film to that date been her which cost 3.6 million and even ben hur was surpassed by wizard of oz's 1939 competitor gone with the wind which costs 4 million oz opened to an incredible reception due to the payoff of all of this money and effort but it would take another two decades and the invention of home television exposing the movie to a new generation of children to rocket oz into legend status in the cultural zeitgeist but unknown to

most until that moment when new interest in oz spurred a number of interviews biographies and memoirs as well as the uncovering of forgotten oz artifacts in the depths of the studio warehouses the production of the wizard of oz was hellish hazardous and nearly deadly with numerous cast members hospitalized and almost killed horrific work conditions and unique and unprecedented production challenges requiring people to literally invent new processes the most wondrous thing about oz is the fact that it ever made it to theaters in the first place so what the hell happened come learn with me just

a quick disclaimer first though there is much to be said regarding criticism of the wizard of oz's story and the way it was made socially and politically due to time constraints i will not be getting into that in this video so please don't think that i'm deliberately ignoring whatever topic you want me to talk about i just can't hit literally everything in one video so let's get into it but first let's take a quick trip over the rainbow to learn about today's sponsor eta love you may have noticed today i'm wearing some super gorgeous earrings

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click the link to enter and even if you don't win the giveaway everyone who enters will get a 25 gift card anyway so definitely check it out and get yourself some beautiful adornments thank you so much to ettala for sponsoring this video and now let's get back to learning about the mythically bad production of the wizard of oz the story of the wizard of oz's production is an incredibly difficult one to put together when it comes to the myths in legends for one thing memory is fallible and many of the people who worked in the

production have extremely variable memories of certain events or dynamics in the end the truth lies somewhere in the middle in many instances for example many rumors surrounding the munchkins or judy garland's treatment on set are extremely exaggerated often by judy herself things may not have been as extreme as we've heard but of course things weren't sunshine and rainbows either after all that's showbiz and hollywood has always been an environment full of big personalities people tend to remember things in extremes over time especially people who have led incredibly hard lives and want to have something interesting

to say on tv judy was always a person who numbed her hurt by entertaining people and my god could she tell a good story but which ones were true we'll get into that judy isn't the only one who struggled to get the true story of oz together producer mervyn leroy himself who of course knew everything about the production would in his later years recount the oz production mentioning people who didn't even work at mgm at the time or swearing that buddy epson who was the initial tin man wasn't even a part of the production but

i think it's unfair to fault people for not remembering things totally right sometimes they were outright lying sure but oftentimes they weren't misremembering intentionally first-hand accounts of history are forever tricky business by the end of the 30s hollywood had five major studios running the industry colombia warner brothers paramount 20th century fox and of course metro goldwyn mayer or mgm creeping up on the business slowly was the ever-growing walt disney animation studios the wizard of oz had been made into film several times before but never truly successfully and then walt disney released snow white in 1938

and the industry began to scramble to find comparable fantasies and fairy tales to adapt the explosive success of snow white shook hollywood already veering towards the nostalgic and sentimental after the great depression and the influence of snow white on mgm's the wizard of oz is extremely palpable during production for example the first woman cast to be the wicked witch of the west was gail saundergard who was clearly intended to mimic the evil queen in snow white she was recast after the studio decided that the witch needs to be ugly instead and sandergaard refused to be

made ugly for any picture mgm bought the wizard of oz and assigned it to producer mervyn leroy and arthur freed as his assistant and as usual everything at mgm was overseen by a man named louis b mayer mayer was an incredibly complicated man he's been characterized in wildly different ways depending on who talks about him he was ultra sensitive and often cried but he also held harsh grudges he cared deeply about the well-being of his stars but he also tore them down he was staunchly patriotic and sentimental and saw everyone who worked at mgm is

basically his family even though he was quick to fire the studio commissary always served apple pie and mayer's recipe for chicken soup many former mgm employees took issue with mayor but even more were deeply loyal to him and the company people who worked at mgm in the 30s remembered often not caring about the long hours and hard conditions and thought of mayor as a father figure for better for worse june allison remembered you never won an argument with mr mayor if you were winning and he knew you were winning he would cry and tell you

how you were one of the family and you would put your arm around him and say it's all right papa step one of bringing oz to the screen was getting the screenplay down unfortunately step 1 proved to be incredibly difficult in all there were more than a dozen writers throughout the process the most prominent was noel langley who wrote most of what ended up on screen but his version took some major departures from baum's book building off of the already widely deviated initial drafts it should be noted hollywood screenwriters were notoriously drunk for various reasons

and the oz writers were no exception langley's version wasn't necessarily weird because he was drunk but it probably didn't help he invented random new characters had uncle henry appear in oz as the wicked witch's son and he had the cowardly lion be the one to defeat the witch his version ends with the lion having transformed into some guy named florezelle and the tin man reuniting with their random lady love interests since singing a love song and as dorothy watches this she is transported back home to kansas in the end it took a number more writers

to bring the script back around to baum's story none of these writers were invited to the previews of the premiere though langley said i saw it in a cinema on hollywood boulevard at noon and i sat and cried like a bloody child i thought this is a year of my life i loathed the picture i thought it was dead i thought it missed the boat all the way around i had to wait for my tears to clear before i went out of the theater given some distance with time though langley would change his tune eventually

after the suffering of world war ii when the film was re-released in 1949 he admitted suddenly i could see it objectively for the first time and i thought it's not a bad picture not a bad picture you know step two of creating oz was the music mgm brought on composer harold arlen and lyricistia parberg two incredibly talented men who loved playing tennis and golf so much that they primarily wrote the aw soundtrack at night and as we all know they wrote an amazing and timeless soundtrack what many don't know is that the most well-known song

from the movie and one of the most well-known movie songs of all time over the producers in the company wanted to go to their rivals previews to give their opinions and this preview was particularly tense because mervyn leroy was an outsider having been brought in from warner brothers yep harburg recalled it was unbearable you were always working with people who knew nothing working with the anomaly of ignorance those ignorant jerks money is power money rules the roost the artist is lucky if he can get a few licks in in the end it took arthur freed

having a screaming match with louis b mayer to get over the rainbow back into the film the full song that did end up getting completely cut in the end was jitterbug a song and dance number that cost eighty thousand dollars in five weeks to film this may be controversial but i don't really care that jitterbug was cut i don't think it adds anything to the story but then again maybe i'm just biased by the fact that when i saw the wizard of oz on vhs as a kid i watched the jitterbug footage after the movie

and it scared the [ __ ] out of me that's right folks baby me was completely unfazed by the witch the flying monkeys the wizard head all of that was nothing what scared me was the tornado scene understandable and a song about an unthreatening bug as if all that wasn't chaotic enough oz would go through four directors before being finished first was richard thorpe who was fired after two weeks when buddy epson was hospitalized then george qcor for three days to fill in then victor fleming who took oz most of the way there and then

fleming was called away to finish directing gone with the wind for q core and king vidor wrapped up oz thwarp getting fired was the most tenuous he remembered that mgm's publicity director howard strickland shipped his ass off to palm springs for two weeks to hide him from the reporters under the guise of him being sick and then they instantly stuck him on directing huckleberry finn and things kind of smoothed out thorpe getting fired wasn't just because of epson it was because according to mervyn leroy he was doing the film all wrong try as he might

he just couldn't think like a child george cucor though he was only on the job for three days made major changes that saved many aspects of the film he had judy garland take off the glamorous blonde wig that they had her in and had her makeup simplified now she truly did look like dorothy he passed the job onto victor fleming a complicated man if you want to say it nicely fleming was known to shoot the wildcats in the hills near his home and line them up outside his door or there was the time where he

saw an alley cat trying to mate with his daughter victoria's cat and he shot the alley cat dead from 150 feet away he was visually flashy but staunchly conservative evidenced by the fact that he was best friends with enemy of the channel john wayne and would go on to found an anti-communist group also with john wayne there was an incident in the oz set where judy garland just couldn't stop laughing at bert lars performance in the scene where she hits him and fleming slapped judy to get her to be serious as you can see not

exactly likeable but what made mervyn leroy hire him was the fact that fleming had the mind of a child that thorpe didn't fleming loved his two daughters dearly that much is undeniable and he wanted to film a fairy tale type movie for them many of the male actors on oz remember fleming fondly he was kind of a bros dude and he was a good friend to them but he has more mixed reviews from the women anyway all this stuff is tough sure but absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for a studio production it is what

it is you know scripts change songs get cut it was the moment the stars got on set that things took a turn towards danger trouble and oz ramped up when it came to choosing what stars would bring the characters to life despite the fact that to us now judy garland is dorothy and she obviously defines the character and it couldn't possibly have been anyone else the concept was not as obvious to mgm at first they were gunning to have the infinitely more popular shirley temple play dorothy i had a very good time in bermuda with

the horse and buggy but i'm glad to be home because after all there's no place like home if they were looking for a box office draw she definitely was it but they quickly realized that temple's singing skills simply could not carry the film and began to look for dorothy elsewhere who else to consider then than the most powerful singing voice in mgm judy garland judy had been hired into the studio at 13 years old in 1935 she had been a performer ever since she was basically a baby born francis ethel gum on june 10th 1922

in grand rapids minnesota she spent her early years as the youngest in her and her sister's vaudeville act the gum sisters after their name was met with laughter at a performance at chicago's oriental theater the sisters changed their name to the garland sisters and eventually france has changed her name to judy and thus a star was born named judy garland her mother ethel fixated on judy's singing power at a young age and began to micromanage her career landing her at mgm the problem was everyone always viewed judy as aljon harmetz calls it she perceived herself

as the undesired repository of her voice she writes in signing judy garland mgm had bought an extraordinary voice unfortunately attached to a mediocre body and a badly flawed face in the next seven years the voice would be trained the teeth capped the nose restructured the thick waist held in by corsets and the body reshaped as well as possible by diet and massage i understand that this description of judy follows how she was seen by the studio and public at large but it's always been truly bizarre to me because even before her transformation i genuinely don't

think she was ugly i really don't just because she didn't have a face like lana turner or liz taylor or any of her other contemporaries doesn't mean she was ugly that's not even touching on the subjectivity of beauty and the absurdity of beauty standards for women at any point in time but i digress it just goes to set up the fact that judy was forced into developing a number of complexes early on that she needed to survive she learned how to become a powerhouse performer she learned exactly how to perform even when she wasn't on

camera she was never cast as a glamorous ingenue or a bombshell she was always the plain and awkward girl next door until wizard of oz judy was cast as dorothy initially because of her voice but it became quickly apparent that she truly embodied a small and meek girl from kansas when judy sings over the rainbow she isn't just acting she sings that song with that much heart because she truly understands it it was a song that went on to become her anthem and define her life and career [Music] [Music] judy wild life ended in tragedy

and sadness having been hooked on uppers and downers by her mother at a young age to keep her working at a breakneck pace ironically the drugs that were the very thing that would destroy her career later on making her incapable of being reliably on set or easy to work with she had a hard time coming to terms with her reliance on them and in her later days in the 60s especially judy spent a lot of time reconning stories of her early career half as a way to entertain people and half as a way to reinvent

her own self-image many of her late interviews saw her making up stories about the wizard of oz in particular like this one about the munchkins well what about the munchkins or this one about her relationship with her three co-stars it shut me out i they'd closed in and the three of them and i would be in back of them dancing and i was and i did i wasn't i wasn't good enough you know to say wait a minute uh it said the director victor fleming would say hold it you three dirty hands let that little

girl in there her daughter liza minnelli has an optimistic view of these jokes and stories she had a way of telling a story she could change anything so anything that she talked about would become an epic joke almost and she did that several times telling stories about the wizard of oz and they have since passed into a myth i mean they really people believe a lot of the things that she has told which in fact we know are not true but the thing is she was such a good performer and told these stories so well

that people really took them seriously and they've been part of the oz core mythos ever since as believable as it may be judy garland was not literally tortured on the set of oz and neither was anyone else but of course things weren't good either to a degree mgm and by extension louis b mayer who unfortunately dubbed judy his little hunchback were more invested in judy's health than most people in her life which was sadly a really [ __ ] low bar they really did want her to be a star but stardom came at such a

dire price there was always a light there that judy could never fully reach when mgm designated her an official star during the oz production they wheeled in her own dressing room to the set with a ribbon around it to cut and everything after the applause and fanfare for her ended and everyone shuffled off to lunch judy tried to open the door but found it locked betty danko margaret hamilton's body devil for the witch saw judy about to cry and went to ask her what was wrong judy said she doesn't have the key and didn't know

who has it she did get in eventually when the wardrobe department lady who had it got back from the commissary but betty dinko still felt bad that they hadn't entrusted judy with the key to her first great present when it comes to mgm's enforcement of judy's restricted diet we have no evidence that it was done during oz but there's no doubt that they put her on one at the special concern of louis b mayer after the production of ozrapped and judy's stardom exploded as she was sent on tour with my arch-nemesis mickey rooney her mother

was absolutely haunting her during oz though and the horrible cycle of uppers to make her perform and downers to get her to go to sleep had already begun harmetz continues judy garland was like a leaf held under a magnifying glass by someone who wants to set a fire if anyone was truly tortured on set it would more likely be the four main characters who had to wear the most intense and hazardous costumes every day the scarecrow the tin man the cowardly lion and the wicked witch ray bolger who played the scarecrow had always wanted to

play the scarecrow ever since he was a child bulger much like his co-stars bert lahr and jack haley was a former vaudevillian and it really shows in his performance he had an incredibly boneless noodly way of dancing that suits the scarecrow perfectly unfortunately he was initially cast as the tin man while buddy epson was the scarecrow bulger fought hard to be the scarecrow and won in the end and ebsen was the tin man unfortunately fate was not kind to ebsen during costume screen tests the makeup department powdered tin flakes onto his face to make him

look like the tin man only nine days into production one night ebsen took a breath in and nothing happened he was rushed to good samaritan hospital and put in an oxygen tent his skin blew his lungs completely not functional as it turns out breathing in the aluminum dust had coated his lungs the studio became hysterical calling the hospital constantly and demanding when he'd be back in the studio makeup artist jack dawn was even more hysterical insisting that the issue can't be the dust because he used pure aluminum dust in the 30s pure aluminum dust was

thought to be totally safe alas not so ebson was in the hospital for two weeks before managing to recover but by then the studio had recast jack haley as the tin man and made sure not to almost kill him this time of anyone in the cast bert lahr was the most similar to his character the cowardly lion he had this immense energy that made him almost too much to bear as a person but perfectly fitting as an animal and he also had tremendous anxiety issues he struggled with minor health problems gas insomnia nerves constantly he

struggled with fear about nearly everything especially his performances the lion's great vivrato to cover up his fear is something that was very true to life for him it's interesting how connected the actors seemed to be to their characters ray bulger played the scarecrow who longed for a brain and bulger himself was incredibly intelligent a lover of literature jack haley's tin man longed for a heart and jack haley was a well-known philanthropist and dedicated father bert lars cowardly lion just wanted some nerve and lara similarly overcame his anxieties every day to perform his grandiose characters for

others and in the end of the story as the humbug wizard reveals all three of them had within them what they were looking for all along of all the people in this story margaret hamilton is the one that i've become endeared to the most as a kid i was never really afraid of her as the wicked witch in general i found her performance to be really entertaining and she was an incredible performer but i'm definitely in the minority here because margaret hamilton was such a good performer she made several generations of children desperately afraid of

her in one episode of mr rogers neighborhood she made an appearance to try and dispel some of that fear there's your old friend the wicked witch of the west how did she how did she talk well she talked like this it's very nice to see you oh that would be fun to be able to talk the whole clip is really sweet and i'll link it below if you want to watch the rest margaret remembers when her agent called her about being an oz he said they're really kind of interested in you and i said what

for he said they're sort of interested in you for a part in the wizard of oz and i said oh gosh think of that i said i loved that story from the time i was four years old what is it and he said well the witch and i said the witch and he said then he said the final thing he said yes what else by this point in her career she had played nothing but old maids and similar minor roles the witch was her chance to finally really show off her skills in a new way

but she spent most the production almost completely isolated as most of her scenes were with just dorothy or the flying monkeys even her dressing room was miserable hamilton recalled i always thought they got me mixed up with the actual witch they must have thought that the witches didn't have very nice dressing rooms because mine was simply awful it was a square of canvas and the floor had some sort of dirty looking rug on it and there was one chair and a card table with a light over it this was in stark contrast to billy burke's

dressing room burke who played glinda the good witch was the broadway star wife of friends zigfield and everybody could tell her dressing room matched glinda perfectly all pink and blue powder puffs and bottles and peppermints filled with fine fabrics and laces she arrived in limousines and exuded that star energy a couple times when burke wasn't there margaret hamilton would eat her lunch in burke's dressing room looking around at the pink shae's lounge the pink satin walls the fur rugs it brings to mind what hamilton always said in interviews about the witch herself that she always

enjoyed herself in everything she did but she never got what she really wanted that couldn't be further from hamilton herself she was never jealous of anyone or bitter she got what she could out of being the witch and never thought in a million years that it would eventually make her a star that someday decades from that moment standing in glinda's dressing room she'd be flooded with daily fan mail and love from fans the production itself would prove to be torturous for the stars the four i mentioned especially tend to recall their times on set as

if remembering time in prison every day they had to come in around 6 am to spend 2 hours getting into their costume and makeup ray bulger had a fake burlap bag that was molded to his face that went over his head and covered most of his skin and the rest of the burlap lines were painted on by hand bulger recalled the mask wasn't porous so you couldn't sweat you couldn't breathe through your skin you don't realize how much you breathe through your skin until you can't do it we felt like we were suffocating after what

happened to buddy epson the makeup department quietly changed their methods from tin dust to tin paste and covered jack haley's pores in a thick white paste to keep the tin from getting in try as they might though they couldn't prevent another tin man health disaster jack haley's eye became very infected from the tin cream paint and was out of commission for a while at the end of the day it took over an hour for the makeup department to get the poor actors out of the costumes the costumes were already bad but the set made things

even worse the studio had borrowed every spare arclight in hollywood to use to light the massive sound stage making it unbearably hot for everyone but especially for the four actors in all encompassing costumes there were so many lights taking up so much power it caused brownouts in the surrounding culvert city neighborhoods people were constantly fainting and having to be carried off set and every once in a while when it became unbearable all they could do was turn the lights off and open the great studio doors to let some air in jack haley couldn't sit or

lie down in his tin man costume so they had him lean against a tilted board where he would fall asleep from exhaustion bert lar would mutter to himself i haven't slept at all and this guy can sleep on a meat hook lar truly did suffer the most of all his costume weighed almost 90 pounds and stunk because it was real lime skin and padded every day when they peeled it off of him he was literally dripping wet with sweat and he had to wear gloves and a massive mane to boot they couldn't breathe well and

they could barely eat too burt larr had a prosthetic covering most of his face so he could only sip soup and milkshakes through a straw margaret hamilton covered in toxic green copper paint had to eat her peanut butter sandwiches carefully around wax paper or had the maid assigned to her by mgm put it into small pieces for her only once did the actors attempt to eat lunch in the studio commissary but their appearance was so apparently grotesque that it disturbed people and mgm made a deal that if they would eat in their dressing rooms instead

the studio would pay for their lunches the green copper paint would prove to be more dangerous to margaret than just making lunch breaks tense in an incident that would nearly cost her her life staying in a test run by betty danko but victor fleming wanted more shots just to be safe after two more tries the final attempt ended in disaster when the smoke and fire went off too soon before margaret was fully under the stage the flames burned her face and burned her hand even more the hat and broom were on fire completely everyone jumped

into action but margaret having only felt some heat had no idea why everyone was panicking then she looked down the skin on her hand was gone now came the horrible task of hurriedly trying to get the toxic paint off of her body before it could poison her makeup artist jack young cleaned it off with alcohol for antiseptic value as you can imagine it was unbearably painful the onset doctor covered margaret's face with a salve and wrappings before she was sent home but not before calling a doctor the doctor took care of her and when the

studio called the next day asking when margaret would be back to work the doctor snatched the phone and yelled i don't want you calling here again she'll come back to work when i get good and ready and not one second before furthermore if she doesn't sue you she's a fool absolute negligence there's no reason for this to happen if she has any sense at all she'll sue you for every cent you've got now i want no more calling up and no more inquiring about it when she's ready to come back i'll call you honestly we

stan but margaret knew she couldn't sue or she'd never work again after six weeks she was well enough to return to mgm when she got in to film the broomstick writing shot she discovered after much pestering about why the hell she'd need a fireproof costume that it was possible the pipe under the broom saddle might explode margaret hamilton was having none of it and absolutely refused to shoot she had a three-year-old son and no husband and was not about to jeopardize her life again for one movie in the end she did the close-ups but betty

danko who had already sustained one injury from a crew member falling into the elevator pit and landing on her was called in to do the air shot with the sussy pole margaret warned betty about the pole went home and almost instantly got a call that betty danko was in the hospital because the sussy pole had exploded when it did betty said that it felt like her scalp was coming off and her hat and wig flew off and landed up into the rafters she fell off the broom but managed to hang on for dear life until

it was lowered to safety as she lay on the stage having her massive two-inch deep wound assessed on her leg a costuming department lady ran in and demanded what did you do with the hat i have to turn it in you know betty was in the hospital for nearly two weeks where she found out that just before her two of the flying monkey actors had been in because their wires broke and they also fell even toto was not immune to the hazards of production life terry the cairn terrier suffered from terrible anxiety that her trainer

carl spitz had worked long and hard to fix i have a feeling some of you have probably been waiting for me to address the munchkins i'll be honest i went into this video fully expecting to stumble into numerous horror stories about the treatment of the little people who were the munchkins of oz because i know how the world and therefore hollywood treat people with disabilities and people who are differently developed and however bad it is now it was so so much worse in the 30s i think it won't come as a shock to you to

hear that many of the over 100 little people on oz were brought in from circuses because they struggled to get jobs anywhere else they were also certainly not paid as much as their peers but i guess this is the part of the video where i get to deliver some good news oz was overall a pretty positive experience for the munchkin actors actually most of the poor treatment they put up with actually came much later after oz's release when renewed interest in the film led to numerous interviews with cast and crew and curiosity about the munchkins

led people to either completely make things up stretch the truth or repeat hearsay as if it were fact mervyn leroy spouted the myth that the munchkins were unusually raunchy and were constantly having orgies at the culver city hotel where they stayed judy garland said on tv that the munchkins were constantly drunk and one of them hit on her a stark contrast to her actual relationship with them on the set where she was extremely excited to work with them and then with her she even gave them individual christmas gifts this chaotic unruly image of the munchkins

is so different from the first hand accounts of the little people themselves who overwhelmingly talked about how more than anything else they were so happy to finally be around other people like themselves for many of them for the first time in their lives they felt like a part of a community they felt honored to be in the wizard of oz they made friendships and yes a few of them like to drink because they're adults and adults are allowed to drink but they weren't drunk on set and even if a few of them were it's not

a reflection of them personally much less the entire group unless you want to go ahead and also judge the wizard frank morgan who couldn't work without having a little something out of the martini bar that he carried around in his briefcase anyway no the little people on oz were not miserable thank god and so there's no reason to believe the the hanging munchkin myth yeah i need to address this there's a doctored video that floats around youtube constantly and it's ridiculous people nearly died while filming oz yes but no one actually died what's more the

four scenes were filmed before the munchkins were even in town okay some people say but it wasn't a munchkin it was the director's son victor fleming had no son okay but it was an actress who was upset that she didn't get the part of dorothy only shirley temple and judy garland were ever considered for dorothy what is in the background in that scene is a real crane flapping its wings if you're still adamant about believing this stupid myth i recommend watching this tick tock by oz historian tori calamito which i'll link below things weren't easy

on the crew either the cinematographer hal rossen remembered the costume of the tin man was so shiny that as he would turn he'd throw 1 million reflections if the reflection hit the lens of the camera we'd have no scene we'd have to stop and find out what part of the costume was causing the reflection and dampen it down the witch was black and green we had to try and keep her in front of a dark grey background the sequence on the ruby slippers also caused a reflection so we had to avoid any light shining on

them which would project the reflections into the camera we usually used one camera on a film there were some scenes on wizard where we used nine cameras because the sets were so large and the costuming department had more than their fair share of work to do as every single costume was custom made to each actor including all of the over a hundred munchkins but one of the most magical things to happen on set happened with one of the few costume items not designed by legendary costume designer adrian but rather bought from a local thrift store

professor marvel's coat was part of a number of random coats that the production thrifted and chosen for its distinguished style that was simultaneously worn down perfect for professor marvel one day frank morgan looked in the pocket and saw a name inside l frank baum as you can imagine this caused commotion on set they wrote to the tailor in chicago who made it with pictures and he sent back a notarized letter saying that it was indeed a coat he sewed for frank baum to fully confirm it baum's widow also identified the code as having belonged to

the creator of oz himself in his own way from beyond the grave baum was still making his mark on the world that he built but most days on set were not quite so magical the folks in the prop shop suffered greatly from toxin exposure hal miller who worked on creating the tornado sequence said we had no respirators you simply stayed up there breathing the stuff for as long as you could stand it for days after we photographed the tornado i was coughing up carbon and sulfur thick black and yellow mucus to make the breakaway glass

the lion jumps through they poured resin into a pool of mercury with no ventilation at all and the snow during the poppy scene was made using white gypsum more likely than the often reported pure asbestos but both are possible and were commonly used during the 30s as fake snow even on a consumer level for christmas decorations asbestos whether it was really the snow or not was a staple on set to try and prevent fire disasters ray bulger's armed during the scene where the scarecrow's arm set on fire by the witch was covered in asbestos and

so was the seat of the ill-fated exploding broom it's a wonder anyone survived at all to be honest [Music] at long last after shooting for 22 weeks and much longer on post oz did finally wrap up and made its way to theaters actually to great success despite the myth that it was a failure upon release even so it would take the movie years to finally break even for a number of reasons most of the ticket sales in its initial release were the cheaper children's tickets and in the 30s a movie couldn't have an extended release

because theaters always needed to make way for incoming pictures plus the end of the year saw the beginning of a little thing called world war ii which obviously choked out overseas sales it was also met with some mixed reviews by critics most reviews were glowing and full of praise others were completely unimpressed like that written by otis ferguson for the new republic the wizard of oz was intended to hit the same audience as snow white and won't fail for lack of trying it has dwarfs music technicolor freak characters and judy garland it can't be expected

to have a sense of humor as well as for the light touch of fantasy it weighs like a pound of fruitcake soaking wet children will not object to it especially as it is a thing of many interesting gadgets but it will be delightful for children mostly to their mothers and any kid tall enough to reach up to a ticket window will be found at the tarzan film down the street the story of course has some lovely and wild ideas men of straw and tin a cowardly lion a wizard who isn't a very good wizard but

the picture doesn't know what to do with them except to be painfully literal and elaborate about everything cecil beat a mill in the seven thousand dwarves by actual count oz was successful yes and very much so but not to a legendary degree not until 1956 when cbs bought the rights from mgm to broadcast the wizard of oz as an annual event on tv now exposing an entirely new generation of millions of children to the movie who otherwise in all likelihood may have never seen it many people saw it on release yes but millions and millions

and millions more saw it on tv if not for television it's likely the wizard of oz would have faded into the shadows of history forgotten in mgm's dusty storage rooms and this revival of the movie made it all the more apparent its value that it had all along much like the way the four friends in the story had to discover their true gifts within with decades of time having passed the world of odds was no longer gaudy and overblown but instead nostalgic and sweet especially after the horrors of world war ii new viewers were able

to look at the acting styles of the main characters and see in them the uniqueness of the characters rather than be reminded of the out of fashion styles of the vaudeville stage and most pointly as time went on people watched the wizard of oz and saw a judy garland unmarred by the pain she had been in in the then present when judy sang if birds fly over the rainbow why oh why can't i viewers felt her pain because to that point she had been desperately singing that refrain for years and years and years in the

same vein of nostalgia as the 70s wore on mgm2 became a figment of a technicolor past as it became more of a las vegas hotel than a studio bit by bit the ephemeral remnants of mgm storage were cleared out and dumped into a pit most likely near anaheim somewhere in the chaos one of the many pairs of dorothy's ruby slippers were found wrapped in a towel in horrible condition in the 70s in mgm's wardrobe basement luckily the shoes were restored and soon enough they were bought on auction for 15 000 by an anonymous buyer most

of those still alive who were involved with oz were indifferent about the shoes but the effect that they had on the public was already growing more and more of course there were more than one pair and all of them have met various storied fates one lives today at the academy museum of motion pictures when i visited the museum last year for the first time i remember spending a long while standing at the ruby slippers staring at them and trying to imagine them still on judy garland in motion and glittering under those hot arc lights as

a kid watching the movie i always wondered if they really sparkled like that in real life in a way they do they captivated numerous people as i stood there and all of us studied them together in a heavy silence i think the ruby slippers are one of those objects that you know makes everyone imagine the exact same things when you look at them sure sure they're just shoes and in the end the moral of the story wasn't really about the shoes was it the shoes represented dorothy's faith in herself and they must be very powerful

or everyone wouldn't want them so badly returning to eljon harmetz some movies never die from underwear to marshmallows wall masks to thimbles cake decorating kits to lithographs and porcelain figures of a cowardly lion a tin woodman and a small dog hundreds of different products have accompanied the wizard of oz into its 60th year we live in a world where almost everything can be bought or sold and commerce has its place but at its heart the yellow brick road is beyond commerce i envy the children who have yet to see the wizard of oz for the

first time thank you so much for learning with me about the wizard of oz's storied production knowing how hard it was to make the film just makes me appreciate it more and it's so fun to rewatch it with new eyes knowing all the interesting fun and not so fun facts about each scene what's your childhood or adulthood memory of seeing oz for the first time let me know in the comments as always when one of my videos relies heavily on a specific source i want to specify it in this video i'm referring largely to the

research done of course by al-jean harmetz in her book the making of the wizard of oz i also referenced eric yovogg's the wizard of oz info site quite a lot definitely check out these sources for yourself as well as the rest of my listed sources to learn more in the description below so until i see you on the other side of the rainbow wash thy hands where they mask and whatever you do do not take off those ruby slippers [Music] [Applause] [Music] you