(lion roaring) - 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. It's visual iconography,
it's pop cultural impact, it's nostalgic value, it's 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. Though nothing close to
the most expensive film to that date, "Ben-Hur",
which cost $3.6 million, and even "Ben-Hur" was surpassed by "Wizard of Oz's" 1939
competitor, "Gone With the Wind", which cost $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 Etah Love. You may have noticed today I'm wearing some super gorgeous earrings from one of my favorite
jewelry brands, Etah Love. I'm wearing the Roses are Red
and Live by the Sword earrings which I've linked to in the description so you can get a pair for
yourself if you like them. I'm absolutely in love with them and I've been wearing them constantly. Etah Love specializes in
beautifully elaborate jewelry, and all of them are super
elaborate and creative. Thanks to Etah Love's
support of my channel, they're holding a giveaway contest. You can have the chance
to win a $500 gift card. Just head down to the description and 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 Etah Love
for sponsoring this video. And now let's get back to learning about the mythically bad
production of "The Wizard of Oz". (whimsical orchestral music) The story of "The Wizard
of Oz's" production is an incredibly difficult
one to put together when it comes to the myths and 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 Ebsen,
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. Firsthand accounts of history
are forever tricky business. By the end of the '30s, Hollywood had five major
studios running the industry: Columbia, Warner Bros.,
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 Gale Sondergaard, 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 Sondergaard 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 ultrasensitive and often cried, but he also held harsh grudges. He cared deeply about the
wellbeing of his stars, but he also tore them down. He was staunchly patriotic and sentimental and saw everyone who worked at
MGM as 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 Mayer, 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 Mayer as a father figure for better or for worse. June Allyson remembered, "You never won an argument with Mr. Mayer. 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, Poppa.'" Step one of bringing Oz to the screen was getting
the screen play down. Unfortunately, step one 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
wildly 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 Florizel and the Tin Man reuniting with their random lady love interest and 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 or the premier 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 lyricist, Yip Harburg,
two incredibly talented men, who loved playing tennis and golf so much that they primarily wrote
the Oz 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 wanted to go to their rivals' previews to get their opinions, and this preview was particularly tense because Mervyn LeRoy was an outsider, having been brought in for Warner Bros. Yip Harburg recalled, "It was unbearable. You were always working with
people who knew nothing, working with the ignominy 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 $80,000 and 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 shit 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 Ebsen was hospitalized, then George Cukor, 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 Cukor and King Vidor wrapped up Oz. Thorpe getting fired was the most tenuous. He remembered that MGM's
Publicity Director, Howard Strickling, 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 Ebsen. 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 Cukor, 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 wanna say it nicely. Fleming was known to shoot the wild cats 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 the 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 Lahr's performance in the scene where she hits him and Fleming slapped Judy
to get her to be serious. As you can see, not exactly likable, 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
fairytale 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 outta the ordinary for a studio production. It is what it is, scripts
change, songs get cut. It was the moment the stars got on set that things took a turn towards danger. (foreboding music) Trouble in 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 buggies,
but I'm glad to be home, cause 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 then 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 Frances Ethel Gumm 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 Gumm 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 Francis
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 Aljean 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 ingénue 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. ♪ If happy little bluebirds
fly beyond the rainbow ♪ ♪ Why oh why can't I ♪ - Judy Garland's 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 60's especially, Judy spent a lot of
time retconning 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? - Yeah, how about the, what? (audience laughs) - The munchkins. - The munchkins. - Were they little kids or were they men? - They were drunks. (audience laughs) - Or this one about her relationship with her three co-stars. - They'd shut me out. They'd close in the three of them, and I would be in back of them dancing. (audience laughs) And I wasn't good enough
to say, "Wait a minute," and so the director, Victor
Fleming, would say, "Hold it, you three dirty hams. 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, but 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 fuckin' 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 double 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 Danko still felt bad that they hadn't entrusted
Judy with the key to her first great present. When it comes to MGMs 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 Oz wrapped 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. Bolger, 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,
noodley way of dancing that suits the Scarecrow perfectly. Unfortunately, he was
initially cast as the Tin Man while Buddy Ebsen was the Scarecrow. Bolger 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 blue, 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 30's, pure
aluminum dust was thought to be totally safe, alas, not so. Ebsen 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. - You brought a flock,
you brought a flock. (laughs) - 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 bravado 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 Bolger played the Scarecrow
who longed for a brain and Bolger 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 Lahr's Cowardly Lion
just wanted some nerve, And Lahr 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.
Roger's Neighborhood", she made an appearance to try
and dispel some of that fear. - But there's your old friend,
the Wicked Witch of the West. - How did she talk? - Well, she talked like this. It's very nice to see you. (laughs) - Oh, that would be fun to be able to talk like (laughs). - The whole clip is really
sweet and I'll link it below if you wanna watch the rest. Margaret remembers when
her agent called her about being in Oz. - [Margaret Hamilton] 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 love that story from the time I was four
years old, what is it?" And he said, "Well, the Witch." (audience laughs) And I said, "The Witch?" (audience laughs) 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 of 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 that 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
Billie Burke's dressing room Burke who played Glinda the Good Witch, was the Broadway star
wife of Florenz Ziegfeld 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 chaise 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 and 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 6:00 AM to spend two hours getting
into their costume and makeup. Ray Bolger 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. Bolger 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 Ebsen, 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 outta 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 arc light 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 Culver
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 Lahr would mutter to
himself, "I haven't slept at all, and this guy can sleep on a meat hook." Lahr truly did suffer the most of all. His costume weighed almost 90 pounds and stunk because it was
real lion 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. Bert Lahr 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, and 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. It's 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 riding 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
closeups, 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 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 30's. 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 them with her. She even gave them
individual Christmas gifts. This chaotic, unruly image of
the munchkins is so different from the firsthand 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 wanna 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 hanging munchkin myth. Yeah, I need to address this. 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
TikTok by Oz historian, Tori Calamito, which I'll link below. Things weren't easy on the crew either. The cinematographer,
Hal Rosson, remembered, "The costume of the Tin Man was so shiny that as he would turn, he'd
throw one 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 gray background. The sequins 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 coat 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 30's 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 Bolger's arm during the scene where the Scarecrow's arm is 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. (orchestra 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 30's, 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 very good wizard, but the picture doesn't know
what to do with them except to be painfully literal and
elaborate about everything. Cecil B. DeMille and the
Seven Thousand Dwarfs 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've faded into the shadows of history, forgotten in MGMs 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 Oz 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 poignantly, 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's saying, "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 70's wore on,
MGM too 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 70's 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 Aljean 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
re-watch 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 Aljean Harmetz in her book, "The Making of 'The Wizard of Oz'". I also referenced Eric Gjovaag's "The Wizard of Oz" info site quite a lot. Definitely check out
these sources for yourself as well as the rest of my list of sources to learn more in the description below. So until I see you on the
other side of the rainbow, wash thy hands, wear thy mask, and whatever you do, do not take off those ruby slippers. (upbeat music)
