Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore
EVERY IMAGE USED IN THIS ARTICLE IS CREDITED TO: MGM/WARNER BROS/MOVIE LENS
There’s a famous shot in The Wizard of Oz when, after surviving a tornado that has hurled her and her home into the magical land of Oz, our heroine Dorothy (Judy Garland) exits her house. As Dorothy opens the front door the film, shot in sepia toned black and white up until this point, reveals bright, vibrant colour through the doorway, contrasting heavily with the drab grey interiors of the house. In a single tracking shot we move forward, out of the colourless interior and into a world of bright blue skies, lush green grass and yellow brick roads. Dorothy, just a moment ago dressed in muted tones, moves forward with us and is revealed in her iconic blue and white chequered dress. All this in a single shot. It’s a moment that remains incredibly effective for the feeling it evokes but beyond that feeling lies an extraordinary story of behind the scenes artistry. This is a film shot in the 1930s after all and while manipulating the colour of a specific portion of the picture is a cinch nowadays (most high school students with a basic understanding of Photoshop could probably do it), at the time it all had to be done live in-camera. At the beginning of the shot as we see Dorothy in black and white from behind as she approaches the closed door (her dog tucked underneath her arm), we are seeing a scene shot in Technicolor. The interior of the house was painted black and white and Toto the dog’s dark brown fur is cleverly concealed by the sepia tone look the film has committed to. The Dorothy we see in this moment is not Judy Garland, but a stand-in, clad in a specially made black and white dress. The stand-in opens the door, revealing the brilliant colour of Munchkinland outside and the camera pans forward, moving past Dorothy for just a few seconds. In those few seconds the stand-in passes Toto to Garland, who has been waiting in the wings wearing her standard white and blue outfit, who then steps back into the camera’s view out in the colourful world of Oz. It’s a moment that it brilliant in its simplicity, a masterful example of a filmmaker’s creativity, and it’s that quality of creativity (both within the world of the film and behind the scenes) that cements the movie’s much deserved legacy.
Based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the movie has an important connection to the last film I covered, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The success of Walt Disney’s animated gamble convinced the studio bigwigs at MGM that a children’s fantasy film had the potential to be both artistically satisfying and commercially profitable. The charming story of a Kansas farm girl who finds herself lost in a magical world and pursued by an evil witch but aided by three unusual new friends, had spawned thirteen sequels and while it had received multiple silent film adaptations (all of which were quickly forgotten and some of which I’ll cover in their own right in other articles) the world of Oz seemed primed for an expensive big screen adaptation. Enter Mervyn LeRoy, a director/producer later nominated for an Oscar for his direction of the romantic drama Random Harvest, who convinced the studio to acquire the rights to Baum’s masterpiece and supervised the film’s production from that point on. The steady hand and constant presence of LeRoy proved crucial, because while The Wizard of Oz now has a very real claim to being the most watched movie of all time, its troubled production is a saga of accidents and tension that almost ended in disaster.
The script for The Wizard of Oz was contributed to by sixteen different writers, only three of whom received an on-screen credit for their work (Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf) and this extensive list reflects the many different takes on that story that were considered before MGM finally settled on the one that most closely followed Baum’s original book. Nervous that the audience would be too “sophisticated” for a fantasy story, the studio considered an early idea that would have stripped all the magic from the film and grounded it in the real world. This iteration would have presented the Scarecrow as simply an incredibly stupid man whose only employable ability was standing in a field and scaring crows away from crops. This was mercifully discarded, though the film’s revelation that the world of Oz was simply a concussion-induced fever dream was added in to soothe the executive’s nerves. Another version saw an increased role for the Cowardly Lion, who would have been a handsome prince cursed by the Wicked Witch to live as a fearful forest creature. It’s difficult to imagine any of these ideas in action and even more difficult to imagine any of them working, so let us count our blessings that reason won out and the original story remained intact at the end of the day. While Shirley Temple and Deanna Durbin were considered for the main role of Dorothy Gale, Judy Garland would eventually be cast, accompanied by Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr and Buddy Ebsen as the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Woodsman respectively. For a brief period Leo the Lion, the beast seen roaring in MGM’s famous logo, was considered to play the Cowardly Lion with an actor providing the voice in post-production. While part of me really wants to see that, it’s probably for the best the studio eventually settled on Lahr considering his wonderfully physical performance.
The rest of the production is best understood through examination of the revolving door of directors that came onboard the project over its life-span, five in total (in addition to LeRoy who would shoot some transitional scenes out of sheer necessity before all was said and done). The first was Norman Taurog, the Oscar-winning director of Skippy, who shepherded the film through pre-production and oversaw much of the design work. He was replaced before filming by Richard Thorpe, whose rushed directing style proved contentious with LeRoy. The character of Dorothy was particularly problematic at this interval; Garland was at this stage wearing a blonde wig and “baby doll” make-up. It was shaping up badly, but then a real tragedy struck. Buddy Ebsen, the Tin Woodsman, came down with severe emphysema, an illness that was quickly discovered to be caused by inhalation of aluminium dust used in his make-up. In critical condition under an oxygen tent in hospital, Ebsen was in no condition to continue with the movie and production was shut down. Once it became clear that much of what was already filmed would have to be reshot with a different actor, LeRoy took the opportunity to fire Thorpe and replace him with interim director George Cukor. Cukor was never intended to actually complete the film, but oversaw the redesign of Dorothy’s costume to the one we now know before he moved on to direct Gone with the Wind. With Ebsen still laid low in hospital, Jack Haley was brought in to replace him and the Tin Woodsman’s dusty make-up was quietly redesigned as a paste. Haley wouldn’t make it out unscathed however: eventually a small quantity of the paste made it into his eye, causing a horrible infection that took him out of commission for two weeks. Interestingly, Ebsen can still be heard in the final movie. The songs had already been recorded with Ebsen and while Haley re-recorded the Tin Woodsman’s solo numbers, Ebsen’s voice remains in a number of group vocals, most notably the chorus of We’re Off to See the Wizard.
The fourth director to board the project was also by far the most successful in his contributions: Victor Fleming who would ultimately be the only credited director on the finished product. Fleming had a strong reputation at MGM. A talented filmmaker with an uncanny knack for handling troubled productions, Fleming had been parachuted into several difficult films over the course of his career and had proven himself to be a reliable fireman when it came to movies run amok. Once he boarded Oz the project entered a state of relative calm and the film began to make great progress. That’s not to say it was an easy shoot however: the movie was being shot in Technicolor, a new format which required an extraordinary amount of light to work properly. Given that the production was shooting entirely on an indoor soundstage, the lights turned the set into an oven, with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38.5 Celsius). This was particularly hard on the actors, who were not only directly in front of the lights but also wore heavy, hot costumes. None had it worse than Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion, who spent his days encased in a heavy full body suit made out of real lion skin. By the end of a shooting day, Lahr’s costume would be dripping with sweat and would have to be dry cleaned and aired out under fans before being used again. That’s not to say the others had it easy though. The Tin Woodsman costume prevented Haley from sitting down so he would routinely spend more than twelve hours a day standing, while Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow makeup included the tight application of a rubber prosthetic to his face which prevented his skin from breathing and supposedly left line marks in the pattern of a burlap sack on his skin for a year after filming was completed. Even Judy Garland didn’t get off lightly; the sixteen year old actress wore a painful corset to flatten her chest so as to look more childlike.
And let us not forget Margaret Hamilton, whose brilliant performance as the Wicked Witch is arguably its best. The green makeup applied to Hamilton was a greasy compound, one that came off wonderfully on-screen but would ultimately prove to be a dangerous component in the film’s second severe injury. While Victor Fleming’s tenure as director was comparatively smooth when compared to his predecessors, a major accident occurred during the filming of Hamilton’s Munchkinland scenes. The sequence, which marks the Wicked Witch’s debut in the movie, ends with Hamilton disappearing in a flash of smoke and flame, an effect accomplished by lowering the actress on a concealed platform in the stage floor which also jettisoned smoke to mask her exit and, once the actress was safely below the stage, also spewed fire for additional effect. In the first take, the door opened early and the smoke appeared before Hamilton reached the trap door. The second take though, was where things went terribly wrong. Hamilton hit her mark perfectly, the floor opened and gushed smoke and the platform lowered. Disastrously, however, the fire went off early, while Hamilton was still head and shoulders above the stage. The greasy green makeup, as well as the Witch’s pointed hat, caught fire and stage hands rushed to extinguish the blaze that was now erupting all over Hamilton’s skin. The actress was badly burned and would spend the next six weeks in hospital. Upon her return, MGM tried to get her to retry the stunt. Hamilton, understandably, refused and so a double took her place. Things again went awry, badly injuring the double, and Fleming finally decided to settle for the original take which is the one seen in the final film.
While not without incident, Fleming’s directorial stint was a vast improvement over those directors who came before him, but after his immediate predecessor George Cukor was fired from Gone With the Wind, Fleming was removed from Oz and once again parachuted in to save a troubled production. Fleming would also end up being the sole credited director on Gone with the Wind which, ironically, would trounce Oz at the Oscars the next year, winning Fleming a Best Director award. Most of the work on Oz had been finished at this point and King Vidor (now best known for his 1956 adaptation of War and Peace) was brought in to close out the production. Vidor filmed all of the Kansas scenes, including the movie’s signature Over the Rainbow sequence, while LeRoy contributed a few aforementioned transition scenes to fill in some holes. By the time production finally wrapped six directors had worked on The Wizard of Oz, five of whom were current or eventual Academy Award nominees, three of whom were current or eventual Academy Award winners and only one of whom was credited on the final product.
After an arduous shoot accomplished through blood, sweat and tears, The Wizard of Oz was ready to be released in theatres. It finally premiered nationwide on August 25… a full six days before World War II began and all but eliminated the European market. The film, while critically acclaimed and successful at the domestic box office, failed to make its money back in theatres. But The Wizard of Oz is nothing if not a hopeful story. In 1956, following the popularisation of television, The Wizard of Oz began to be licensed out for commercial broadcast and soon proved wildly successful. By the 1960s the film was being broadcast annually and it’s appearance on the TV schedule had become close to a recognised national event in the United States. Cinema revivals have periodically followed and the advent of VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and streaming have broadened the films audience even further.
The film itself is an extraordinary creature, one with an incredibly distinct personality and that unquantifiable magic that always accompanies the best children’s stories. Loveable characters propel the story through a colourful world of fantastical creatures and charming towns while the soundtrack has a claim to being cinema’s best. It’s masterpiece of an opening number (Over the Rainbow) not only lays claim to being one of the best movie songs ever written but also to being one of the greatest songs of the twentieth century, one that has transcended the medium it was created for.
The decision to cast many of the actors in dual roles, playing one character in the black and white world of Kansas and another in the colourful realm of Oz, is a masterstroke. While MGM’s decision to explain Oz away as a dream is artistically suspect at best, it is saved by the filmmaker’s ingenious choice to weave the two worlds together by making characters in the land of Oz proxies for those in Dorothy’s real life, exaggerated by her subconscious. The three farm hands that chat amiably with Dorothy as they work the Kansas prairies are transposed into the trio of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and Cowardly Lion, while her awful neighbour Myra Gulch makes a wonderful nucleus for the Wicked Witch of the West. The PT Barnum-esque showman Dorothy encounters while running away from home at the beginning of the movie is also a perfect fit for the blustery fraud of a wizard the heroes finally encounter when they reach the Emerald City.
At the end of the day the film is about finding strength in yourself. Our heroes search for qualities they desire the most, Dorothy for her home (a stand-in for her place in the world; consider how she spends the Kansas sections complaining that no one understands her and singing songs of a more fulfilling life), the Scarecrow for brains, the Lion for courage and the Woodsman for a heart. Their final realisation as symbolised by the Wizard’s granting of ultimately meaningless gifts: that they had it all along, has been proved in the journey along the way. The Scarecrow devises the plan to rescue Dorothy, the Lion leads them into the castle and the Woodsman just about cries whenever the weather changes. And Dorothy? Dorothy was never going to find her place in the world by being lead there. As Glinda the Good Witch tells her in the penultimate scene, she had to discover that for herself. Her journey through Oz was a crucible of character, a test of her own brains and courage and heart, one that ultimate solidifies her as a person. That message, that wonderful, beautiful message, is the story’s greatest asset, a parable about growing up that is timeless in its relevancy and universal in its relatability.
The second life of The Wizard of Oz is almost unparalleled (the only film that comes close to matching it is the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life) and today it is generally accepted that Oz has probably been seen by more people than any other film in history. It’s an unproveable hypothesis to be sure but what other competitor is there that has achieved such astonishing cultural permeation, that has stood against the test of time so completely? It’s not a fluke or a chance of fate either: the film itself earns its canonisation in ambition and creativity or, if you prefer, heart, brains and courage.
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