The Chaos Behind The Wizard of Oz (and why it turned out ok anyway)

The Wizard of Oz is undoubtedly one of the most beloved American films of all time in fact it's so beloved that it's almost exhausting one of those properties that's become more of a brand than anything else spin-offs merch parodies you name it sometimes when something is that omnipresent its popularity can affect the way that you think about it either you overlook it or maybe even start to consider it overrated I have to admit that I've fallen into that trap dismissing The Wizard of Oz with an eye roll sure it's great everyone knows that let's move on at least until recently revisiting this film not long ago I now appreciate it for different reasons than I did as a child less for its enchanting entertainment value and more as a Masterwork of filmed narrative storytelling at just under two hours it is one of the tightest and most efficient films I have ever seen each character's goals are quickly defined the lessons are clear each Arc is neatly resolved it uses the dream sequence Trope in a fair way the tenor of each performance is in sync it's visually cohesive the pacing is excellent this cohesive becomes particularly shocking when you consider the wizard of Oz's production history which was the opposite of cohesive to say the least about 12 screenwriters worked on its screenplay and four different directors LED its production nowadays those numbers would immediately send up a red flag that's far too many cooks in the kitchen it would signal that something was amiss that the studio was scrambling for someone anyone to come in and clean up the mess and what a mess it was like if MGM had a human resources department they would have been working overtime to deal with what happened on this set injuries abuse hospitalization not good these stories have been well covered elsewhere and I highly recommend you check them out but despite all the turmoil behind the scenes we know a lot of things had to go right for this film to turn out the way it did and that's what I want to focus on today the happy accidents the way Studio politics economics and individual skill sets fortuitously came together to finish the puzzle that was The Wizard of Oz this video isn't intended to distract or minimize those more scandalous aspects but rather to add to and offer an understanding of how filmmaking worked at a major studio in the 1930s we could tell this story in a number of ways the last minute Hoops Judy Garland had to jump through to prove she was the proper choice to play Dorothy the innumerable drafts by screenwriters who took the story in strange directions but I specifically want to look at the four directors who worked on Oz Richard Thorpe George qcore Victor Fleming and King Vidor why couldn't one director complete this film why were they picked what did they offer as artists and leaders how did individual Visions affect the final film and what does Gone With the Wind have to do with all of this hopefully by the end of this video we'll understand how on Earth too many cooks ended up making such a delicious feast before we get started I want to thank the sponsor of this video mubi a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great Cinema click on the link in the description of this video to try mubi free for 30 days go to movie.com Be Kind Rewind to watch some excellent titles including Park Chen Wu's decision to leave for free right now [Music] so one of the first things we need to know is what the expectations were for the director of The Wizard of Oz there are two things I want to note here one The Wizard of Oz was intended to be a Prestige film in 1937 Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Not only was this film extraordinarily successful at the box office but it was also a Smash Hit with critics and was considered a genuine work of art Walt Disney received an honorary Academy Award with seven little statues attached for each of the dwarves for the film's significant screen Innovation which Charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field with Oz MGM meant to replicate Disney's success appealing to both children and adults by leaning into the Fantastical to accomplish this they set aside a lot of time and money to ensure the film's success to them it would be worth it Oz might not turn to profit but they hoped it would further bolster the reputation of the studio and rank it as an industry innovator 2. The Wizard of Oz is a weird movie because we watch oz so often now and because movies that are spiritually akin to Oz are made every two minutes we tend to lose sight of it in its own context as a film of the late 1930s especially when compared to its fellow Best Picture nominees which were largely historical dramas and adaptations of classic literature Oz is a very strange film so on the one hand you have Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Wuthering Heights and on the other you have a Technicolor action adventure musical with battles special effects and a cast that included a talking lion witches and flying monkeys even as a musical it was somewhat unconventional in its time musicals then were often set backstage at a theater or around show business in some capacity giving the actors an excuse to perform intricate numbers throughout the film on a stage not in quote unquote real life and only on rare occasions like 1932's love me tonight did any of the songs in these musicals actually relate to the plot at hand like they do in Oz what's more during the songs the film largely excuse memorable or involved choreography there's no Busby berkeley-esque kaleidoscopic chorus nor anything remotely akin to what Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were doing which by that point had definitively dominated the box office all of this is to say that whoever took the reins of Oz would have to be capable enough to Cobble together a Prestige picture but also extraordinarily flexible open-minded and imaginative to blend these genres together in a way that few filmmakers had ever done before so why on Earth did they pick algae and hermet's notes in her seminal text the making of The Wizard of Oz the producer Mervin Leroy could not remember why he selected Richard Thorpe to direct Oz nor was Thorpe ever sure why he was chosen we already know he was fired so clearly he wasn't the right choice in retrospect but digging into Thorpe's filmography I think we can make a pretty educated guess as to where Lavoy was coming from when he made that initial decision having worked with the studio for many years by 1938 MGM frequently trusted Thorpe with important but routine material he directed some Myrna Loy William Powell vehicles at a time when the studio was very invested in exploiting the popularity of that pair he had directed Louise Reiner and the toy wife when they were most heavily devoted to making her the next big thing he had also directed a few of the Tarzan sequels which were huge money makers for MGM so theoretically we have the makings of a good fit for The Wizard of Oz he could work well with up-and-coming stars which is what Judy Garland would have been considered at that time he could film action sequences in Fantastical situations and could deliver light-hearted humorous material Thorpe could also serve mgm's bottom line described by TCM as proficient to the point of boredom he was famously committed to efficiency he would finish films ahead of schedule Often by only doing one take of each shot doing another only if an actor messed up he also rarely insisted on editorial changes that would put his artistic stamp on a film these qualities seem Preposterous and borderline irresponsible by modern standards but in the context of the studio system this attribute was actually quite valuable in the studio system and especially at MGM producers were thought of as more important to a project than a director and the studio was most important of all directors had less authorial control over those films than we tend to think of today often being assigned to projects after actors had been cast scripts written sets design Etc generally speaking films had to adhere to a Studio's house style which producers determined in that way directors were sometimes thought of as interchangeable traffic cops you could plug into any project and do the producer's bidding there are of course exceptions to this and it varies from Studio to Studio but Thorp is a great example of this kind of reliable company guy who was mainly there to execute the producer's vision in this case many creative decisions had already been shepherded and approved by producers Mervin Leroy and Arthur freed so hiring Thorpe wouldn't have seemed like too much of a risk indeed Thomas Schatz writes in the genius of the system that the selection of second-rate staffer Richard Thorp harsh indicated that Louis B Mayer was satisfied with the preparation of the picture and that he assumed Leroy who had been a top director at Warner would be acting as a virtual producer director while this kind of director could be a blessing to the studio it wouldn't work for every project especially big expensive Prestige projects that involved several technical innovations this was immediately evident to Leroy when he reviewed Thorpe's work according to harmet's Thorpe's two weeks had been spent shooting scenes in the witch's castle with Dorothy the tin Woodman the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion he also shot immense amounts of films of Toto escaping from the castle and returning to help rescue Dorothy Leroy hated all of it it was missing something A Creative Flair he was a wonderful guy at dick Thorpe Leroy told harmetz he made some fine pictures but to make a fairy story is a different kind of thing entirely he didn't quite understand the story he just didn't have the warmth or the feeling to make a fairy story you have to think like a kid you'll be hard-pressed to find anything Thorpe filmed for The Wizard of Oz in the film because well it was scrapped Thorpe was dismissed and after two weeks of filming they had to start again at Square One [Music] George Q core by his own admission was not the person to bring in if you were looking for someone who could evoke The Whimsy and Imagination of a child but as a team player like every MGM director he agreed to serve as a temporary placeholder to give things in order before the next director could come on board and by temporary I mean very temporary like three days so while qcor spent very little time on the production he had the chance to review Thorpe's work agree it wasn't working and make a few minor but significant changes to understand what qcor might have been looking for and the adjustments he might be inclined to make during this short tenure we have to know a little bit about his prior work kukur was by this point a prominent director working on melodrama's refined literary adaptations and sophisticated comedies like dinner at eight Little Women and Romeo and Juliet while qcore is less known for specific filmic visual techniques he is and was understood to be an excellent director of actors or more specifically of actresses by directing Catherine Hepburn in her star-making debut a bill of divorcement Greta Garbo and perhaps her greatest Sound Performance in Camille and later Ingrid Bergman and Gaslight Audrey Hepburn and my fair lady and on and on and on he earned a reputation as a woman's director he despised this label partly because it erases the fact that he also directed several best actor-winning performances and probably because for a long time making women's pictures relegated due to the trash bin of film history sure enough for many years his reputation took a measurable hit because of this label for qcore the key to getting a film right was in the details of her performance he told film comment in 1972 I achieved practically all my film effects through actors and actresses other directors get their Effects by photographing a turned doorknob Etc I like to concentrate on actors faces because he began his career in film as a director of dialogue he also developed a notoriously good ear for how an actor speaks to him a good performance could locate authenticity even in the most fictitious of circumstances you have to dig out what is real and valid let's say Camille there were things in that that were conventions that a bad woman would ruin a young man's life but if you do it so that everybody understands it and you dig out the the reality and the truth of it because the truth will move people so given all this it's no surprise that the most iconic changes Q were implemented on Oz had to do with Judy Garland's performance upon review of Thorpe's footage Gerald Clark writes in his biography of Garland get happy q-core instantly saw where Thorpe had gone wrong his Oz was not believable he'd invested so much effort in making Judy look pretty for example that she looked not like a simple farm girl from Kansas but like a Hollywood Starlet masquerading as a simple farm girl with heavy makeup and long blonde hair even her acting seemed artificial to kukor as if she had been instructed to be cute to act as he described it in a fairy tale way kugor felt that Dorothy needed to be transparently sincere if Dorothy unhesitatingly accepted the wacky characters of Oz so would the audience and the easier it would be to find the human truth in an otherwise outlandish Tale q-core stripped Dorothy of her glamorous makeup in favor of a more natural look and replaced her long blonde wig with pigtails and a reddish brown Hue closer to Garland's actual hair color I think it's safe to say that Q Corp was right here maybe it's a familiarity bias but there's something not right about this wig it's a lot a hairstyle a young girl could feasibly do on her own paired with light pink lips relatively subdued fake lashes and little else but blush works much better it's still very polished and manicured but this is MGM in the 1930s we're talking about we're not going to get Judy Garland costumed like a Dorothea Lang portrait in addition to altering her look qcor also directed new tests with Judy Garland and instructed her to not act in a fancy schmancy way she must always remember he said that she was just a little girl from Kansas obviously Q horn ever filmed Garland for the final film and we can't really know the extent to which his involvement affected her performance so I don't want to over emphasize his contribution or minimize Garland's skill but it's hard not to imagine given the stack of Great Performances qcor left in his wake that a few days with car Ireland could be enormously helpful particularly at this juncture in her career where she was relatively green and until then had received little useful direction for this role he of course also later guided Garland through what I consider her best performance in A Star is Born watching the film now one senses that Q chord's Instinct was correct Dorothy's sincerity and openness to her unconventional companions makes her so endearing she never smirks or condescends them she empathizes and seeks to help them and doesn't look too wide-eyed or Airy in the way that Disney princesses from this era do for example qcore is never meant to stay on Oz long term and after a few days happily moved on to a project that was much more up his alley Gone With the Wind leaving Leroy on the hunt for another new director someone who would hopefully see the project through to the end someone with the mind of a child who could really understand what made the story work who he picked wasn't exactly the first person who might have come to mind for that criteria Victor Fleming Like Richard Thorpe was a versatile team player who would have been used to stepping into ongoing projects or doing uncredited work in the interest of the studio his filmmaking had a much more consistent personality than thorps though a big game hunting motorcycle riding womanizer outside of work Fleming became known for portrayals of masculinity and humor he frequently directed actors like Clark Gable and Gary Cooper in westerns and more mature comedies like red dust speaking of red dust he also directed some of Gene Harlow's best work in Reckless and bombshell two films though that likely convinced the Roy that Fleming would be a good candidate for Oz where Treasure Island and Captain's courageous these films share several important characteristics with Oz both are adaptations of beloved books both have well-orchestrated action sequences and both are told from the perspective of a child the boys in these films enter a world unknown to them through chance interactions with strangers they learn the rules of the road grow to love The Eccentric characters they meet along the way and ultimately mature because of their experiences relevant to the tone Leroy wanted for Oz is that while these films take a child's point of view they aren't childish they convey the naivete and innocence of Youth while taking seriously the things they experience as an adult story on a more granular level both films clearly display the technical prowess and creativity Thorpe ostensibly lacked Captain's courageous takes place primarily on a ship which could feel cramped or limiting but never does thanks to Fleming's clever use of angles in Treasure Island he uses the camera to put the audience in Jim's shoes this shot where we first meet Long John Silver is my favorite using his perspective to peer through the ship and up at the pirate or this one where he's staring upward as if in awe of the mechanics of sailing and the dexterity of the sailors in his talk at the Library of Congress Fleming biographer Michael stragau cites two of his early films that further elaborate on his technical ability and artistic sensibility first when the clouds roll by from 1919 one of Fleming's many collaborations with Douglas Fairbanks here in a sequence that highlights the actor's athleticism we see Fairbanks eat a meal fall asleep and begin dreaming the food he ate transforms into characters who chase him through the grounds of his home as Fairbanks leaps through the air and flips over a fence to evade them he eventually runs back inside where he walks on the ceiling Out Of Reach of the helpless food below it's silly but Fleming clearly shows comfort with Technical Innovations using high-speed filming to capture slow motion and rotating a room to create an optical illusion he also shows his sense of the pacing of Comedy contrasting the graceful athleticism of Fairbanks with the fumbling ineptitude of the food it's a brand of humor Fleming employed again and again sometimes in ways that are wildly prescient take Mama's Affair from 1921 where Fleming got ahead of the Talking Tree gag by over a decade as trigal puts it you see an incredible confidence of a director who will just take outrageous material and go with it and understand it understand the psychology of it and understand the humor of it this was the imagination Roy needed to orchestrate an army of flying monkeys to capture the comedic gags of Veteran vaudevillian actors to devise explosions and Bubbles and melting witch and a faux wizard Fleming wasn't necessarily interested in working on Oz but coincidentally had just leaned into becoming more of a family man and thought making a film that might appeal to his daughters might be nice another Stroke of Luck for MGM Fleming brought with him his frequent collaborator screenwriter John Lee Mahon who reworked this Kansas portion of the screenplay and is largely responsible for the beginning of the film as we see it today ultimately Fleming directed the bulk of The Wizard of Oz everything that actually took place in Oz they left the Kansas scenes for last but before Fleming could touch them he was reassigned he wasn't pulled off of Oz because MGM was unhappy with his work he was pulled off because his Services were specifically requested Elsewhere on the set of Gone With the Wind now you may be wondering wait a minute didn't you just say that George kuhor left oz to work on Gone With the Wind yes I did and yes he did qcor had been directing Gone With the Wind for about three weeks but his work wasn't satisfying the film's producer David O Selznick according to the making of Gone With The Wind by Steve Wilson the two spent weeks jockeying over the tone of the production finally when they couldn't agree on the tempo or tenor of the childbirth scene qcor was fired MGM reassigned him to the women a comedy that essentially epitomizes his skill for honing dialogue delivery and actresses performances although Gone With the Wind was not being produced by MGM MGM had invested a great deal of money and resources into that film in return for half of the film's profits from its distribution this included access to mgm's Talent so when the film needed a new director selzinic once again turned to MGM Fleming a preferred collaborator of Clark Gables was brought in to complete the film as big as MGM wanted oz to Be Gone With the Wind had to be even bigger so even though Fleming hadn't finished Oz it didn't matter Gone With the Wind was the priority another replacement could be arranged to bring Oz across the finish line but who would be up to the task [Music] foreign could call upon King vedor to finish up this film shows what a true embarrassment of riches the studio had in the late 1930s one of the true masters of the silent era Vidor had earned relative Independence for a director of the 1930s put off by the extensive and controlling contracts of the major Studios he tended to flip from one to the other consenting to short-term contracts only often for a handful of films at a time in 1939 Vidor found himself in the middle of one such contract at MGM once again vedor's involvement in Oz was intertwined with the demands of Gone with the Wind according to Vidor he had been asked by Selznick to read the scripts of Gone With The Wind in the hopes of hiring the director to start filming in the immediate aftermath of kukor's dismissal Vidor was extremely daunted by the task I was going to put up a big argument over doing the film so quickly he said but over the weekend without telling me Selznick had made a deal with mayor to get Fleming because Clark Gable had asked for Victor so David asked me if I would take over the Wizard of Oz I was so relieved to get out of undertaking gamut the wind that I said sure that'll be great worth mentioning here that according to Wilson's book Fleming was always selznick's first choice to replace q-core as one of the more independent directors with bona fide masterpieces to his name leader was often given more free reign artistically and we can point to more obvious signature trademarks of his visual style Vidor directed his first feature film at age 24 in 1919. I mentioned this because Vidor consists instantly credited his style as a director to the demands of the silent era imagery was the dominant Factor along with rhythm and pace and tempo in my mind and in probably the mind of many other silent film directors but certainly in mine so even in his sound films vedora learned how to orchestrate Massive Action sequences with almost no dialogue employing special effects while time stunts and expert positioning of the camera when TCM documentary about Vidor uses this great battle in vidor's last film Salman and sheba which needs not a sentence of dialogue to convey a captivating series of events as we know Vidor had to complete the Kansas scenes which were perfectly suited to this technique most obviously with the tornado once again this is essentially silent sequence but extraordinarily effective thanks to his expert deployment of special effects seamlessly rear projecting footage of a miniature muslin sock to create the illusion of a distant twister ripping through the plains of Kansas Rhythm also played a key role in vidor's films he developed a technique called silent music in which he would use a metronome and a bass drum to coordinate and time the movements of the cast and create a visual sense of rhythm to my knowledge he didn't use this technique on Oz but his emphasis on movement definitely came into play in one of the film's most iconic scenes Somewhere Over the Rainbow it's a unique number in the show in that it has little to no action attached to it it's a pure ballad Dorothy is very basically standing in a barnyard and singing that's it under choreograph it and you risk boring the audience which is how most ballads were filmed at this time stationary over choreograph it and you risk pulling Focus From the purpose of the song Vidor takes a simple but effective approach here the camera simply tracks her as she slowly moves through the yard spending about one phrase per verse in different locations when she finally parks in one spot toward the end of the song the camera gently pulls back and re-situates her in the frame it's not complex but it's effective he's spatially aware lightly sentimental and frankly wise enough to let Judy Garland's performance Remain the centerpiece of the scene this is the audience's most intimate moment with Dorothy in the film bonding us to her by giving us access to her most private desires because Kansas book ends the film it was imperative that those scenes hit the correct emotional notes set up the disillusionment and devotions that guide Dorothy's Arc then neatly bring her back down to earth so to speak finally reveling in relief and familiarity it would require a Deft sensitive hand to convey what Clark calls the tender emotions of a frustrated adolescent Fleming was less skilled with actors than Vidor not that he was bad his style was just more blunt and he usually received a much more blunt performances and despite directing Gene Harlow and Clara Beau to great success he was not known to work well with actresses he literally slapped Judy Garland because she was ruining takes by laughing during this scene for what it's worth Vivian Lee much preferred Q core to Fleming and according to Harmons she continued to consult with him after he'd left Gone with the Wind kugor might have excelled here but as we know he was busy elsewhere and frankly worked better with more sophisticated material Peter was kind of the best compromise excellent with actors and more specifically at tapping into the perspective of the every man his films often follow otherwise Anonymous regular people thrust into situations beyond their control they Relish in small moments with big emotional impact often involving reunions or family ties and he gets so much out of his actors in these moments this scene with John Gilbert as a soldier reuniting with his true love in the big parade this scene in The champ in which he gets much more out of Walter Beary and Jackie Cooper in a few minutes then Victor Fleming did in the entirety of Treasure Island in which a young boy learns he won't be living with his father anymore and who could forget this scene in Stella Dallas in which a mother lovingly but tragically observes her estranged daughter's wedding one of Barbara stanwick's greatest performances in other words I cannot think of someone more suited to capture Dorothy's Return from Oz the emotional payoff of the entire film than King vedor finally with the Kansas scenes filmed The Wizard of Oz was ready for editing only time would tell if all this effort had been worth it for MGM [Music] I realize I've spent the past several minutes explaining why these directors were mostly in the right place at the right time it's important though not to lose sight of the fact though that there was plenty of turmoil on this set and unexpected challenges that drove up the cost of the film and put it far behind schedule where MGM could typically crank out a small film in less than a month for less than five hundred thousand dollars Oz took a little over five months to make and cost over 2.7 million dollars the film actually did do really well though people enjoyed it and it earned about three million dollars but with additional advertising and distribution costs Etc it meant that ultimately it resulted in a net loss of roughly 1 million dollars for MGM as popular as it was it still didn't become the instant classic we might assume despite its box office success critics were decidedly more mixed I think in part because there was so little to compare it to almost all of them mentioned Snow White at some point in their reviews most of them stating it's obvious superiority the New Yorkers Russell Maloney landed possibly the most scathing hit in his review which read fantasy is still Walt Disney's Undisputed domain nobody else can tell a fairy tale with his Clarity of imagination his simple good taste or his technical Ingenuity this was forcibly born in on me as I sat cringing before mgm's Technicolor production of The Wizard of Oz which displays no trace of imagination good taste or ingenuity Frank Nugent at the New York Times gave a much more ringing endorsement by courtesy of the Wizards of Hollywood The Wizard of Oz reached the capital screen yesterday as a delightful piece of Wonder working which had the youngsters eyes shining and brought a quietly amused gleam to the wiser ones of the oldsters not since Disney's Snow White has anything quite so fantastic succeeded half so well in terms of its Awards potential as you might know 1939 was a notoriously stacked year dominated by the absolute Juggernaut of a film Gone With the Wind however Oz did win best original score best original song into juvenile honorary award for Judy Garland Victor Fleming would win best director but for Gone With the Wind so did Oz achieve what MGM wanted it to achieve no it's debatable it didn't necessarily Garner the critical Praise of Snow White but it was clearly respected and the financial losses might have felt like more of a punch to the stomach had Gone With the Wind not brought in hordes of cash for them that year that the Wizard of Oz didn't become a series in the vein of Tarzan or the Thin Man and that there aren't any famous imitations from that time period though kind of gives you an idea of where their minds were at that was fun let's not do that again Oz's Legacy as a classic was formed much later both by the Advent of television and once again a coincidental connection to Gone With The Wind in 1956 CBS tried to lease Gone With the Wind from MGM for one million dollars MGM refused as an afterthought CBS made a 22 500 offer for The Wizard of Oz MGM agreed and also gave CBS an option to broadcast the film annually with that opportunity CBS made with the Wizard of Oz an event something for children to look forward to every year slowly endearing the film and its characters to generation after generation I'm almost positive the first time I saw it was on some kind of Television event like that in the 90s if you haven't seen the wizard of oz in a while I suggest you give it a shot you might find like I did that you notice and appreciate different things with time before I sign off I want to thank mubi for sponsoring this video mubi is a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great Cinema from Iconic directors to emerging on tours there's always something new to discover each and every film on this platform is hand selected it's like your own personal Film Festival streaming anytime anywhere as you might know last month I published my 12 days of actress video which is part of an annual series I do in which I recommend 12 performances I really love it's been incredible to hear from people who've actually sought out those films and said that they really enjoyed them if you want to get in on the action and see what all the fuzz is about you're in luck a lot of the films I recommended this year are actually streaming on movie right now which means all you have to do is click the link in my description and you can start watching them for free in the meantime I'll be participating in Sundance Fever by checking out some films I've missed on their Sundance favorites playlist which has a bunch of selections from festivals past Strawberry Mansion River of Grass vidalina Varela lilting they seriously have so much to dive into and if you love film I highly recommend that you check them out you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com Be Kind Rewind that's ubi.com Be Kind Rewind for a whole month of great Cinema free [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Views: 326,253

Keywords: The Wizard of Oz

Id: 3ROBPjTWbKI

Length: 35min 9sec (2109 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 29 2023