Wizard Of Oz Facts – Filmmaking has come a long way since studios struggled with Technicolor, make-up and stunts as they did in 1939 when the famous Wizard of Oz was filmed. With cheerful songs and scary tornadoes, the story of Oz moved and scared us. Like children. But there are many more behind-the-scenes facts about your favorite childhood movie that you definitely didn’t know.
Judy Garland was 16 years old when she filmed The Wizard of Oz, but her character, Dorothy, was supposed to be a child. To look younger and more childlike, Garland was pressed into a corset every day during the weeks of filming.
Wizard Of Oz Facts
11-year-old Shirley Temple was originally slated to play Dorothy, but the producers didn’t think she had the vocal strength to play the role. In addition, there were contract disputes that forced the producers to look elsewhere for their lead actress.
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The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films to introduce color to cinemas. The early technological processes made it very hot on set, so most scenes were shot in heat of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
L. Frank Baum 1900 In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s shoes were actually silver, not ruby. To mesmerize the audience with the Technicolor features, the color of the slippers has been changed to red-red.
When Dorothy finally arrives in the Emerald City, we see her and her new friends being driven around by purple, yellow, and red horses. The special effects team actually covered the animals in flavored jelly powder, which they continuously licked off during each take, so each scene had to be shot very quickly.
Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was only 36 years old at the time of filming. However, her younger antagonist, Glinda the Witch of the North, is played by Billie Burke, who was actually 53 years old when they shot the movie.
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Buddy Epson (known for playing Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies) was actually cast as the Tin Man, but had a severe allergic reaction to the aluminum dust in his makeup before filming began.
Originally, it was decided that Dorothy would be blonde, and Judy Garland was even given a golden wig. However, after filming began, the look was abandoned as the director preferred a more natural look for the character.
There is much speculation that The Wizard of Oz contains several political references. Some scholars believe that Dorothy represents the ideal political system and that the tornado and the Wicked Witch are metaphors for corruption and destruction.
The makeup of the Wicked Witch of the West was so toxic that actress Margaret Hamilton lived on a liquid diet to avoid poisoning from ingesting the green paste. Because of the copper-based ingredients, her face was even painted in grass weeks after production ended.
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Many of us as children were terrified of the huge tornado that tore through Dorothy’s house. However, the special effects team created the scene in 1939 with a 35-foot-long muslin hose that swung around, blowing dirt, dust, and wind around it.
The original paint used on Yellow Brick Road actually turned green when the crew first tested it on the Technicolor screen. To fix it, they had to play around with plain old industrial yellow paint until they finally got it right.
Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, definitely didn’t have it easy during the filming of the movie. During the scene where the scary witch disappears into the cloud, Hamilton was badly burned. Not only was he injured while playing a magician, but his stuntman was also injured during the sky writing scene.
The infamous song “Over the Rainbow” that we all know and love was almost entirely cut from the film. The executives felt that the song would make the film too long and it was almost never used, but luckily the producers decided to keep the ending song for the entire film.
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Judy Garland got some serious laughs during the scene where she slapped the Cowardly Lion. To snap her out of it, director Victor Fleming slapped the actress shockingly right before filming. Definitely not a tactic that would be used today.
A total of 3,120 costumes were created for the film. From the main cast to the munchkins and monkeys, the costume designers pulled all-nighters to create this memorable film.
When the Scarecrow finally gets his brain, he mispronounces the Pythagorean theorem. Of all the people working on the film, no one seemed to notice this silly mistake.
In the movie, we see Dorothy crush the Tin Man because he’s stiff from being outside for so long. However, the actual butter didn’t show up well enough on camera, so the crew used chocolate sauce instead.
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The film crew used chrysotile asbestos fibers, a deadly carcinogen, to create snow in the “tulip field” scene. Today we know that exposure to this harmful substance causes lung, throat and ovarian cancer and is banned in many countries.
Many scenes featuring the Wicked Witch of the West had to be removed from the final edits of the film because she was too scary for children. The producers felt that the film would not appeal to younger audiences because of the horror of the wicked witch.
In the scene where the Wicked Witch tries to steal the ruby slippers, a fire breaks out, preventing her from taking them. The team creatively started the fire using apple juice, but sped up the film to make it look like fire.
The tornado scene depicts Dorothy’s house falling from the sky, but how did the special effects team capture that in the 1930s? Well, they used a miniature prop for that whole windy scene, dropping Dorothy’s little house over a shot of the sky and then reversing the film to achieve the effect.
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Only two of the Munchkins actually had lines in the film. Professional singers and voice actors were used to dub the original actors. 124 people participated in “Colored cuffs”.
As we have seen, makeup back then was much more sophisticated than it is today. However, there were times when makeup artists had to use everyday materials to create each character’s quirky facial features. Like Cowardly Lion’s artificial face, which consisted of the remains of a brown paper bag.
It was long rumored that one of the munchkins had committed suicide on the set of the film. And in one scene from The Yellow Brick Road, what appears to be the shadow of a body hangs in the background. But many are dismissive of the news, blaming the shadow on one of the many animals the zoo has employed in a forest environment. Originally published by Warner Bros. in 1939, this picture features Burt Lahr as the Cowardly Lion and Ray Bolger as. The Scarecrow, Judy Garland as Dorothy and Jack Hale as the Tin Woodman are featured in The Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard of Oz had its world premiere 75 years ago on August 12, 1939 in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Two weeks later, the film was shown in theaters across the country, and now, three quarters of a century later, the story of Dorothy and her friends lives on today.
The Wizard Of Oz 70th Anniversary
The Oscar-winning film is based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Chittenango-born L. Ott Frank Baum. She has written 13 books about Dorothy Gale, a Kansas farm girl who is swept into the Land of Oz by a tornado, which have since inspired dozens of movies, musicals, TV shows and other novels.
This is a former resident and native of Chittenango L. An undated photo of Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The film ended up costing $2.8 million, a lot at the time, and grossed over $22 million at the box office. Let’s hope Baum has something behind him.
The heroine’s shoes were silver in The Wizard of Oz, but were changed for the film to make the scene more colorful. MGM still owns the copyright to the ruby slippers, which is why Dorothy wears them in everything else, even though Baum’s works are now in the public domain.
Wizard Of Oz, The (1939)
The Guardian reports that Technicolor required more light than conventional film, so temperatures on set were often 100 degrees or more. Also, Judy Garland’s white dress was pink, which was obviously easier to shoot in Technicolor.
Before CGI, movies like Purple Horses were created with regular jelly powder. However, according to Flavorwire, the Emerald City scenes had to be shot quickly because the horses kept throwing jelly.
A wooden horse appears in the background of the Tin Man scenes. According to the Huffington Post, Baum’s Oz brings a horse to life. “The Wizard of Oz. The Official 75th Anniversary Companion also mentions that Miss Gulch attached an umbrella to her bicycle.
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