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Production #1060: The Wizard of Oz · Hooray for Hollywood

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone and welcome to Hooray from Hollywood, a podcast all about the legendary stars, studios, and scandals that shaped Hollywood during its golden age.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Matthew Marlowe, and I am honored to be your guide on this incredible journey through film history.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Over the course of this series, we will be reliving some of Hollywood's most memorable moments and discussing the indelible icons of this legendary era.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: But first, let me tell you a little bit about me.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: As I said, I'm Matthew Marlowe.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a big band singer, Hollywood historian, and collector, and I'm so excited.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is our very first episode.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh! Our very first episode of what I hope will be a long series, and we have so much to talk about.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: In each episode, we're going to be discussing a particular film, star, or even pieces of contemporary media surrounding the golden age of Hollywood.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now, there have been a lot of misconceptions and legends regarding this period of time, most of which began then and there with gossip columnists such as Tedda Hopper and Luella Parsons.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: And they've only spread and become even more sensationalized due to the rise of social media.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: I began this podcast because I want to dispel the falsehoods and reinstate the facts.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why every episode is heavily researched.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to be providing you with factual information and debunking the myths that have hung around longer than Claudette Colbert.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: In today's episode, we will be discussing my favorite film of all time, The Wizard of Oz.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: My favorite film of all time.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you top The Wizard of Oz?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: You can't.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Judy Garland, Multicolored Horses, Flammable Witches, A Dry Queen Who Comes Dominic.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: This film has it all.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: It is so much, in fact, that it's virtually impossible to discuss it all with only one episode.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I could talk about the Ruby slippers alone for hours, and I fully intend to.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: The Ruby slippers are the holy grail of all film memorabilia.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Immediately upon seeing them, you know who wore them, in what film, and what pivotal role they played in the film.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're not watching but are listening to this podcast, I can tell you I have a pair of Ruby slippers here on my desk.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, of course, these aren't the actual Ruby slippers from the film.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: At$2 to$28 million a pop, I could never afford them.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: But these are the next best thing: a replica pair handcrafted by Ruby Slippers expert, Mr.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Randy Struthers.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: They are a treasured piece of my collection, and I'm thrilled to be sharing them with you now.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: That being said, there is so much to discuss about this film, and there are going to be further episodes surrounding it in the future.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: But for now, without any further ado, on with the show.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: MGM's The Wizard of Oz has a long history which dates back to 1900.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a children's novel written by L.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Frank Baum, and the very first copy of the book came off the press on May 17, 1900.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: For our younger listeners, this is the century that I was born in.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: In 1932, Disney's Silly Symphony's animated short, Flowers and Trees, was released, and it was a tremendous success.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: The overwhelmingly positive, critical, and commercial response to the short inspired Samuel Goldwyn to purchase the film rights the following year for$40,000.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now, adjusted for inflation, that would be equivalent to just over a million dollars today.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And this was not a random business interest.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: This was an aptly chosen investment, as it came at a time when audiences were calling for more sanitized, family-friendly films to be presented on the big screen.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now, there was a lot of hype about Goldwyn's Wizard of Oz, but ultimately Paramount's failure of Alice in Wonderland in 1933 landed the project back on the shelf.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to understand why, I invite you, if you will, to go on YouTube and watch the trailer.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: This film is a train wreck.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: It is nightmare fuel.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: This is it, it is the Wonderland characters on amphetamines.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, and it was the 30s, so who's to say?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't believe that this was meant to be seen by any sane person or child.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if they were, I don't think they stayed so for long.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: But this all changed in 1937 when Walt Disney released the first full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Its critical and financial success made clear to movie studios that fairy tales could still be profitable at the box office.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: So naturally, talks once again arose about the Wizard of Oz.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And on June 3rd, 1938, Louis B.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Mayer, executive of MGM Studios, purchased the rights from Samuel Goldwyn for$75,000, which is equivalent to about$1.7 million today.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: Good on you, Goldie.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: The film begins with the opening credits.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thrilling.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Aren't you so glad that you started this podcast?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: We see the title of the film, The Wizard of Oz.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Followed by a credit which reads a Victor Fleming production.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And after the cast list, we see a list of screenwriters.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, ten screenwriters worked on script treatments for The Wizard of Oz.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: However, the final screen credits would read Screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allen Wolfe.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Adaptation by Noel Langley.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: The final credit, the director's credit, reads directed by Victor Fleming.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: However, there were six directors in total who worked on the film.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk a little bit about them.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So first there was Norman Tarrog.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: He was first assigned to The Wizard of Oz, but only oversaw preliminary tests and set blueprints before he asked to be taken off because he really just didn't understand the picture.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And days later, Richard Thorpe assumed the role of director.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Thorpe began directing on October 12th, 1938.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he put Judy in a blonde wig and too much makeup, and her performance was responding to this very made-up appearance.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so it made her act too artificial.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: She looked more like Alice in Wonderland than Dorothy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that was not the comparison to be making at the time, let me tell you, just as paramount.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, it didn't even take two whole weeks for the film's producer, Mervin LeRoy, to express his dissatisfaction.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: Of Thorpe, Mervin LeRoy said, quote, he was a wonderful guy.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: He made some fine pictures, but to make a fairy story is a different type of thing entirely.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: He just didn't have the warmth or the feeling.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: To make a fairy story, you have to think like a kid.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: So Mervin LeRoy asked George Kor to step in.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now he did not want to direct the film because as he said, I was brought up on grander things.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he said that the book, The Wizard of Oz, was a minor book full of fourth-rate imagery.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: I tell you, you work on Gone with the Wind, and suddenly you're Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Get over yourself.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: However, he agreed to help out, as it was expected of directors at the time, to be team players.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Help out your buddies.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: So George Kuker steps in and immediately he's like, What's going on here?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: He said, quote, Judy Garland looked artificial.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: She was too made up, too pretty.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: The whole joke was that she was this little literal girl from Kansas among all the freaks.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: If she's real, it makes the whole picture funny.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: So QCor removed Judy's blonde wig, probably to have it restyled for Baby Jane, and took off half her makeup.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: He told her to always remember that she was, quote, just a little girl from Kansas.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Qcor did not, however, direct scenes for the final film.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: He merely directed tests with Judy's new look and left.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: Victor Fleming directed the picture for four months, and it was his material for the bulk of the film that was used, and so he received screen credit.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: The actors who spoke on working with him, including Margaret Hamilton and Jack Haley and Ray Bulger, all spoke very highly of him.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: But Victor Fleming left before production was finished to direct Gone with the Wind.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: God, that movie which took everybody's attention at MGM at the moment.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: At the end of his time on set, Judy orchestrated a farewell party for him, which included a comedic send-off when the crew turned on five large fan machines to quote, blow Fleming off set and away with the wind.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: It stopped being funny when they couldn't turn it off and everything was flying out the window.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Directors were holding on to the walls of their bearing.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Then King Vidor came in to direct for the final 10 days of filming.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: And while his contribution was seemingly small, he was responsible for staging Over the Rainbow.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Each of these directors contributed to this timeless film in their own way, even if, in the case of Thorpe, it was to show those who would follow what didn't work.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: And in the end, the film was the result of many minds contributing to the imaginative imagery which made up the fantasy world of Oz.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's hop right into the picture.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: We open in Sepiotone.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Gorgeous, beautiful Sepiotone, MGMs, Technicolor Extravaganza, Seputone in a farm.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Disappointing to say the least, but bear with me.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sepiotone was created by filming in black and white and then placing the film in a brown bath in order to soften the look of it and remove the harshness of the black and white.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it was Herman J.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Mankowics, the first of 10 writers in total who worked on script treatments for Oz, who wrote this onto the first page of his treatment in a paragraph that read, as discussed, this part of the picture, until the door is flung open after Dorothy has arrived in the land of munchkins, will be shot in black and white, but every effort should be made through tinting to emphasize the gray nature of the landscape and Dorothy's daily life.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: So this is where we meet Dorothy, who is portrayed by the legendary actress Judy Garland.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Judy, as many now know, was not MGM's first choice for the role.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, that was Shirley Temple.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Shirley Temple in the mid-30s had been number one box office attraction from 1935 to 1937, with MGM's Clark Gable as a distant second.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that's on Shirley.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you put Clark Gable in a little schoolgirl dress, get him to sing about Animal Cractors, see what he can do.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's all I'm saying.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: But in the spring of 1937, MGM's Louis B.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Mayer and Daryl Zanick from 20th Century Fox were negotiating a deal in which Fox would loan Shirley Temple to MGM for the Wizard of Oz.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And in exchange, MGM would loan Clark Gable to Fox for two films, but the deal fell through.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Aside from this, Shirley Temple just didn't have the chops for the role, and Judy clearly did.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: So in the end, the role wasn't offered to Temple and went to Judy Garland.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And according to Jay Scarfone and William Stillman, authors of The Road to Oz: The Evolution, Creation, and Legacy of a Motion Picture Masterpiece, a great book with a very long title.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: This caused Judy Garland to give Shirley Temple the nonsensical nickname Squirr Bumple.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Which is the only way that I would be referring to her henceforth.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I've said it, no one can judge me for it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Ironically, it was due to the success of The Wizard of Oz that Daryl Zanick starred Squirrely Bumble in a film, in a fantasy film called The Bluebird in 1940.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the film was so terrible that it ultimately ended Bumble's career.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Another bumble bites the dust.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: But this isn't her film.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: She's gone.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is about Judy.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Judy was described by her co-stars as being absolutely enchanting.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: All who worked with her said that she was terribly sweet, had impeccable manners, and was the ultimate professional.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Margaret Hamilton, who played The Wicked Witch of the West, said that she was, quote, one of the happiest people I'd ever seen.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Jack Haley, who played The Tin Man, remarked, quote, Judy was as lighthearted a person as I ever met in my life.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: She always wanted to hear something funny so she could laugh.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now, many people talked today about how restricted her diet was while filming The Wizard of Oz, and claimed that she'd been put on a diet of chicken soup and cigarettes.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: And according to Elf Baum's granddaughter, Florence Baum, quote, Judy had an ongoing weight problem, and the studio kept her on a strict diet.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: We had become friends by now, and Judy would have me, her hopeless slave, go to the commissary at noon and order a double portion of mashed potatoes and gravy and sneak it to her on the set.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: We did this for a while, and to my knowledge, the studio heads never found out.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: The studio also employed Barbara, or Bobby as she was known, Cache, Judy's stand-in on the Wizard of Oz, as Judy's personal trainer.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And Bobby would ensure that Judy had an exercise regime that included badminton, swimming, hiking, and tennis.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And this continued through her next film, Babes in Arms, and only ended when the studio began to feel more comfortable with Judy's weight.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: To help her diet along and suppress her appetite, the studio physician also prescribed her dexidrin.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now, it seemed to Judy at the time that everyone was hyperfixated on her diet, which may have been true to a point or may have even been due to paranoia, which was a side effect of Dexidrin.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like this is all really important to discuss at this time because even though this was over 80 years ago, it seems that nothing has really changed.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Women are still forced to slim down for the appeal of men.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's important to remember Judy's suffering through this and constantly being made throughout her entire life to be something else that she wasn't.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: But that's all I have to say about this at the moment.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Here we see Dorothy running down a path with her dog Toto close behind.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now, of all the actors that were cast, it took them the longest to find Toto.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And initially, Mervyn LeRoy wasn't sure if Todo should even be a dog.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or if he should be a man in a costume.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And doubling down on this, he was debating for a time whether or not Toto should be able to speak.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: These questions were publicized, and ultimately, hundreds of adamant school children wrote letters insisting that Toto should be a real live dog who cannot speak.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: But it troubles me deeply to imagine an alternate film in which Squirrell Bumble is Dorothy, and she's followed close behind by her oversized wolf dog, Toto, who is played by a very real human who speaks to her.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: She isn't coming yet, Todo.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Did she hurt you?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, Dorothy.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Come on, let's get home to Aniam.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: So the search began for a dog, and the producers weren't sure what kind of dog they were even looking for.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: They used the drawings done by W.W.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Denslow for the original Oz books as reference, but the breed of dog was uncertain.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when dog trainer Carl Spitz had been handed the drawing, he was certain it was a Karen Terrier and brought Terry to the studio.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when they saw Terry, the producers immediately hollered, That's the dog we want, and she was hired.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, Toto was a girl.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's time for our very first fact or fantasy.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Fact or fantasy.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Toto was paid more for the Wizard of Oz than Judy Garland.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So there is a rumor that's been circulating for years, which claims that Terry the Dog was paid more than Judy Garland.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is a fantasy.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Terry was paid$125 a week, whereas Judy Garland was paid$500 a week.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: But some people like to get these two numbers mixed up.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Just for reference, Charlie Grapewin and Clara Blandick, who played Uncle Henry and Aunt Dem, were paid$750 a week.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Billy Burke was paid$766.67.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Margaret Hamilton,$1,000.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Buddy Epson,$1,500.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Burt Lauer and Frank Morgan,$2,500.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Ray Bulger was paid the most at$3,000 a week.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And when Jack Haley replaced Buddy Epson, his salary, too, was$3,000 a week.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Their salaries totaled$13,391.67 each week.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds like a bargain.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: But during filming, Judy fell so in love with Terry that she actually offered Carl Spitz$400 for her.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: And when Spitz declined the offer, she bought a dog in New York that was similar in appearance to Terry, named Chow Chow.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now we arrive at the Gale Farm, which was shot on stage 29 of the MGM lot.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: And this is where we meet Aunt M, played by Clara Blandick, and Uncle Henry, played by Charlie Grapewin.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: The two of them are hard at work trying to save their chicks from a broken incubator.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: And this is when Dorothy comes barreling in, trying to claim Aunt M's attention, saying, Aunt M, Miss Goldsch hit Toto right in the back of the head with a rake just because she says he gets in our garden and chases a nasty old cat every day.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, but he doesn't do it every day, just wants to run twice a week.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he can't even chase her, he can't even catch her nasty old cat anyway.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Now she says she's gonna get the sheriff.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Aunt Ms.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Aunt M suppresses the urge to slap Dorothy Silly, but she just cannot be arsed.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Aunt M tells her they're too busy.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: And Dorothy gives up.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually really sad.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy gives up.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: And next we see the farmhands Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke, played by Ray Bulger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lauer, respectively.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now, screenwriter Noel Langley is responsible for much of the framework of what would appear in the final film, including the Kansas farmhands who reappear in Oz as a Scarecrow and Tin Man.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: Similarly, he invented Miss Gulch, who reappears as the Wicked Witch of the West.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Each of these farmhands make comments which connect them to their Oz counterpoints, such as, your head ain't made of straw, you know, and just have a little courage, that's all.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Those sort of things that normal people just say all the time.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so then Auntem tells Dorothy to find yourself a place where you won't get into any trouble.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this causes Dorothy to reflect on the idea of such a place.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: It also brings us to our very first song of the film, Over the Rainbow.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: The song was written by songwriters Harold Arlin and E.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Y, or Yip as he was known, Harburg.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the logic behind Over the Rainbow's poetic lyrics was simple.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yip Harburg said, quote, This little girl thinks my life is messed up.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Where do I run?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: The only colorful thing Dorothy saw occasionally would be the rainbow.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that the rainbow could be a bridge from one place to another.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: A rainbow gave us a visual reason for going to a new land and a reason for changing to color.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is my favorite song of all time.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also one of the most famous songs in film history.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's really easy to explain.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's the Everman song.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone can relate to the song's meaningful, simplistic message.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone has troubles and imagines a world where there isn't any.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think its endurance was also due to the facts that they couldn't have known at the time.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: This film was released in 1939, shortly before the start of World War II.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that made this song all the more popular and meaningful to the public at the time.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's also made so much more poignant in the fact that it's sung by Judy Garland, who whose own life was plagued by troubles.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that the song and its message haunted Judy.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: She was quoted as saying, I believe in the idea of the rainbow, and I've spent my whole life trying to get over it.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And even though this heartfelt and poignant song was truly the heart and soul of the entire film.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: First preview.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: How do you remove Over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: The reason why this happened is because producers who attended the preview of the film in San Bernardino were complaining about the fact that Judy Garland was singing in a barnyard.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: And why would you have a celebrity singing in a barnyard?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: She's a starlit.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: She's just been risen to stardom at this time.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: And sh they thought it was undignified for her to be singing a song in a farm.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it's important to note that these would have been rival producers at the time who were likely only giving their feedback to make Mervyn LeRoy look bad.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: But regardless, Louis B.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Mayor had it removed from the film.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And Arthur Freed, Harold Arlin, and Yip Harberg were understandably outraged by the exclusion.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really Arthur Freed who raised hell with Louis B.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Mayer until it was ultimately returned to the film.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Next, we see Miss Gulch, otherwise known as Lady Macbeth without the sincerity, riding her bicycle.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: She's played by Margaret Hamilton.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, Miss Gulch will later reappear in Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: However, Margaret Hamilton was not the first choice for the role.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: For The Wicked Witch, Mervin LeRoy had wanted, quote, a glamorous witch, a fallen woman wearing green eyeshadow and a witch's hat made out of black sequins to be played by Gail Sundergaard.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Gail Sundergaard reflected on her casting in the film by saying, quote, Mervyn and I did the entire witch's wardrobe.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I would wear sequins everywhere, a tight black sequin dress, a black sequin hat.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: The makeup would be very glamorous and thus subtly very wicked.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Then Mervin came to me and said, Gail, the people around me say I absolutely can't make the witch a glamorous witch.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: The children need that wicked, hateful witch.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want you to be an ugly witch.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Fine, Mervin, I really don't want to be an ugly, hateful witch.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the end of it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: In those days, I was not about to make myself ugly for any motion picture.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: And decades later, she stood fast to that decision, saying that she had, quote, no regrets.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely no regrets.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Coincidentally, after bowing out of the production of Oz, Sundegaard did star in The Bluebird, that awful squirrely bumple film, that was ultimately a failure.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's two of them down.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now we just need to find out what happened to the actor that Mervyn Leroy wanted to play Toto.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: But when Margaret Hamilton received the call for the film, she was thrilled.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'd done about six pictures for MGM by that time.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one day my agent called and said, uh, Maggie said they're really kind of interested in you.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, what for?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: He said uh they're sort of interested in you.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And for a part in the wizard of them.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh think of that.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I love that story.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then how was four years old?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, The witch.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I said the witch.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Yes, what else?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now in Kansas, the Wicked Witch appears as Miss Gulch, and Miss Gulch is a wealthy landowner who, according to An Dem, owns half the county.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: In W.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: W.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Denslow's artwork for the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West is depicted holding an umbrella because of her aversion to water.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: And as a subtle tribute to this, in one of the script revisions for the film, Miss Gulch carries an open umbrella that shades her from the sun.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, this didn't make it into the final film, but if you do look carefully, you'll notice that Miss Gulch does carry a closed umbrella at the front of her bicycle, which I think is so cool, so funny to see.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Miss Gulch tells Uncle Henry that she wants to see him and Aunt Em right away about Dorothy.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: And Uncle Henry says, Dorothy, what has Dorothy done?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Miss Gulch says, What has she done?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm all but lame from the bite on my leg.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: You mean she bit you?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, her dog.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, she bit her dog, eh?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uncle Henry's trying out all his material on Miss Gulch because apparently he's trying to pursue a career in show business and leave the farm.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: We transition into the sitting room of the Gale House, where Miss Gulch tells Aunt Anne that Toto is a menace to the community and that she's taking him to the sheriff to make sure he's destroyed.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy objects, and Miss Gulch intervenes, saying that if they don't comply, she'll hit them with a lawsuit that will take their whole farm.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: She then presents them with the sheriff's order allowing her to take Toto.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: And Dorothy then objects and bursts out and says, No, no, I won't let you take him.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: You go away, you, oh, I'll bite you myself, you wicked old witch.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Miss Gulch says, All right, Dorothy, okay.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Don't think I'm gonna take it easy on you just because you're a little girl.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: But ultimately, Toto is put in Miss Gulch's basket and Dorothy exits in tears.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Then Aunt M reads Miss Gulch for belf.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: She tells her, Oh, Myra Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn't mean you have the power to run the rest of us.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: For 23 years, I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you, and now, being a good Christian woman, I can't say it.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: But in a cut scene, she comes from Miss Gulch's split ends, her tacky shoes.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: She tells her she slept with her husband, the works, the whole lot of it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's beautiful.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Margaret Hamilton later spoke about Miss Gulch and said, quote, Miss Gulch was just like a hundred other parts I'd done.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: She was thin and she was skinny and she was mean and she was funny in her audacity and in her feeling of just being appalled at the simplest things.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: She was funny in her strictness and her hewing to the line and her insistence on certain things, regardless of whether she was right or wrong.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: When I watch her on television, I think she's too fast and too jerky.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: There's something about that characterization I never really liked very well.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I just don't like the lady.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I don't like her taking that dog.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: As Miss Gulch is riding off with Toto in her basket, Toto escapes and runs home to Dorothy, who at that moment is crying on the floor of her bedroom.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now, those is never explicitly mentioned.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you look carefully, you'll notice that there are poppies in Dorothy's wallpaper in her bedroom.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy is overjoyed at seeing Toto, then decides they have to run away.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: She packs a suitcase and the two of them make off to regions unknown.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: On their way, they come across Professor Marvel, who is played by Frank Morgan.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Mary Mayer, who was the press agent for The Wizard of Oz, used to tell a really interesting story about Professor Marvel's quote.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: She said, quote, For Professor Marvel's coat, they wanted grandeur gone to seed.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: So the wardrobe department went down to an old secondhand store on Main Street and bought a whole rack of coats.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: And Frank Morgan and the wardrobe man and Victor Fleming got together and chose one.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of a Prince Albert coat.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: But during one day on set, Frank Morgan turned the pocket inside out and found written inside the name L.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Frank Baum.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: What are the odds?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: That is so crazy.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, we wired the tailor in Chicago and sent pictures, and the tailor sent back a notarized letter saying that the coat had been made for Frank Baum.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Baum's widow identified the coat too, and after the picture was finished, we presented it to her, but I could never get anyone to believe the story.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Al Jean Harmetz, who wrote The Making of the Wizard of Oz, which is another great book that I highly recommend reading, said that the story was even published, quote, as an example of the lies press agents are willing to tell in order to get a story into print.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that sad?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: But Professor Marvel convinces Dorothy to return home after making her believe that Aunt M is so distressed at her leaving that she's having a heart attack.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: As Dorothy runs back home, a cyclone is developing.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, George Bassman, one of the composers for Oz, was responsible for writing the score for the Cyclone scene.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: He worked on it for three weeks.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, I wrote it and scrapped it five times.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Herb Stothart told me to work on it until I was happy with it.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't happy until the sixth version.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: The final score for this minute and a half worth of music was 60 pages long, and an orchestra of 90 instruments was used to record it, when 50 instruments was more common for a film score.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now the tornado was the most challenging and expensive effect of the whole film.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: It was a 35-foot muslin sock built on stage 14.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: The top was connected to a gantry at the top of the stage.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the bottom was hidden through a slit in the stage.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: And Fuller's earth and compressed air were fed in from the top and bottom with air hoses.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Of this, Hal Miller said, quote, in those days we had no respirators.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: You simply stayed up there breathing the stuff for as long as you could stand it.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: For days after we photographed the tornado, I was coughing up carbon and sulfur, thick black and yellow mucus.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: That is horrendous.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a wonder anyone made it through this film.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: A few feet in front of the cameras, there were panels of glass with big pieces of cotton that were pasted on them, and these moved in opposite directions to create the appearance of a dark and stormy sky.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's really such a compelling effect and still holds up even today, which is incredible considering that this film was made in 1938.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Next, we see the Cyclone tearing up the fields of Kansas.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Aunt M, Uncle Henry, and all the farmhands duck into a storm cellar for protection.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: All the while, Aunt M is calling out Dorothy's name.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy returns to the house searching for Aunt M when she's struck by an imploding window and knocked unconscious.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in the original novel by L.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: Frank Baum, Oz is a real place.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: However, in the film, Dorothy's being knocked unconscious signifies to the audience that everything to follow is a dream.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Suddenly the house becomes airborne, and now we are in the inside of the tornado.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Through Dorothy's window, we see various farm animals flying by, which have also been taken up in the storm.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: We see two men in a rowboat who happily wave to Dorothy, I guess they're friends of Dorothy.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: And finally we see Miss Golchapir riding her bicycle.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: In an instant, she transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West, flying on her broomstick, and she cackles.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy hides in fear.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Next, the house comes crashing down with a thud, and there is silence.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy leaves her bedroom, crosses to the door, opens it, and color.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: Vibrant, radiant color.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now, color for the Wizard of Oz was created using the relatively new three-strip technicolor process.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: The three-strip technicolor process in comparison to the two-strip process or even competing processes such as Cinecolor was far superior.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I just love Technicolor.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's so warm and radiant and beautiful.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's like candy on the screen.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll be delving more into Technicolor more in depth in a future episode, but I just have to touch on it because it is so quintessential to this film.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the transition from sepiatone to color was actually filmed in Technicolor.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: But in order to achieve the effect, a transition set was built of the Galehouse interior and it was painted in its respective sepiatone colors.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And Bobby Cachet, who is Judy Garland's stand-in, was wearing a sepiatone version of Dorothy's gingham dress.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: She walks into frame holding Todo.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: She slowly opens the door, backs out of the frame, hands Toto over to Judy Garland, who then steps into the shot wearing Dorothy's blue gingham dress and into Munchkinland.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so simple in hindsight, really, but so memorable and so effective.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: People still talk about the first time that they watched that scene and the impression that it had on them.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: I know I'll never forget it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another Fact or Fantasy! Fact or fantasy.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: The Wizard of Oz was the first Technicolor film.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: This is a fantasy.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: The first feature film to be shot entirely in three-strip Technicolor was Becky Sharp in 1935.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: However, they wouldn't fully be comfortable with it for another 10 years.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that's all we've got for you on this backdoor fantasy! We now enter Munchkin Land, which was created on stage 27.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: We see large flowers, a deep blue river, little houses with thatched roofs, distant hills, and in the center of it all, a yellow brick road and a red brick road.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because color was far from perfect back then, specific shades of paint had to be used in order to ensure that the color was reproduced on film properly.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Everything had to be done through endless trial and error.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: And for Oz, sets would be created and filmed a week or two in advance just to be sure that they photographed correctly before cameras started rolling.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: So now let's talk about the red brick road.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: There are two roads in Munchkinland which are joined in a spiral and then break off into separate directions.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: And while this is never explained or even addressed in the film, there are theories about the red brick road and where it leads.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: According to the original map of the Land of Oz from the books and L.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Frank Baum's descriptions of its geography, Munchkin Land is in the eastern quadrant of Oz, and the yellow brick road leads west toward the Emerald City, which is at the center of Oz.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because of this, fans believe that the red brick road likely leads south toward Quadlin Country, one of the four countries in Oz.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: And this would also explain why the road is paved with red brick, as red is the official color of Quadling Country.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy is awestruck by the wondrous sights surrounding her and speaks one of the most famous lines in film history.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: Get away from her, you bitch.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: That was in fact a Sigorny Weaver.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: An alien.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, she actually says, Todo, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: She then declares, We must be over the rainbow.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: And just then, Glinda the Goodwitch appears, floating down from the sky in a bubble.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Screenwriter Noel Langley was responsible for Glinda the Goodwitch appearing in a bubble.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: According to him, he was inspired by Annette Kellerman's Queen of the Sea, which was a silent film version of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: And in this film, the witch had first appeared as a bubble.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, so I felt we could do worse than allow Glinda the same mode of transport.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's so funny.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Glinda asks Dorothy if she's a good witch or a bad witch.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy says that she's not a witch, and Glinda then formally introduces herself as Glinda, the witch of the North.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: She tells Dorothy that she's been informed of a new witch that has just dropped a house on the Wicked Witch of the East.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: She then motions to Dorothy's house and to the witch's legs, which are sticking out from underneath it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, screenwriters Florence Ryerson and Edgar Alan Wolfe were against the idea that the Wicked Witch of the East should be killed by Dorothy's house.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: In the notes on the original script, I have to include these because it's so goddamn funny, they wrote, quote, a small thing, but important, we think, the greatest care should be taken to see that nothing actually dies in the picture and nothing is too terrifying for children to see.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: This refers particularly to the death of the first witch, Witch of the East.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: If she is turned into something amusing and harmless, or her power is knocked out of her in some way, it will avoid an actual death.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps her power really lies in her red slippers.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: And when the house comes down on her, she's rendered helpless long enough for Dorothy to pull off the slippers.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy has always wanted red slippers.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: And once having taken them, the witch is turned into a nice old lady, a parrot, a white tabby cat, or anything else we choose.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: I believe their initial casting for the nice old lady was Dame Judy Dench.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: They did not, however, have an objection to the melting of the Wicked Witch of the West.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Au contraire, they wrote, We feel that Dorothy's throwing the water on the Wicked Witch of the West and melting her is much too casually done.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: The audience should know that the water will melt her beforehand and be hoping Dorothy will find it out.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: That will give a suspense every time Dorothy touches a pail of water.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is so funny because I can't shake the visual of Dorothy landing in this foreign land and being so consumed by the idea of owning a pair of red shoes, she sees them from sticking out under her house and rips them off of the feet which they are attached to.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy and ludicrous behavior for someone who just found themselves in a brand new world.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: Usually, when people are in a brand new place, they like to be on their best behavior, but not Dorothy.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, she's gonna go and steal some dead woman's shoes.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't even care that they're still attached to the feet.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: They are still warm.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: She does not care.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing stops Dorothy from stealing her red shoes.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: She takes them off the box.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't call 911.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't get help.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: She doesn't alert any passers-by of the fact that there's someone who is in pain, in danger here.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: She rips the shoes off their feet, and then this woman turns into a nice old lady or a parrot or a tabby cat who, I don't know, befriends Dorothy after this.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: We don't really care about what happens to her after the fact.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: We just know that Dorothy steals her shoes, and then the wicked witch, then I don't know, bec has her power neutralized and becomes some thing that just exists in awe after the fact.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think that this is absolutely insane and ludicrous, and I need a remake immediately in which this happens.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Played by Squirrelly Bumble.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: So Glinda asks Dorothy again if she is a good witch or a bad witch.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy observes that witches are old and ugly.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: And Glinda explains that only bad witches are ugly, which prompts Dorothy to wonder why Glinda asks if she was a good witch or a bad witch.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: But Glinda, being the gracious woman that she is, tells Dorothy that if she were worried about how she looked, she would get rid of those pigtails and that department store makeup.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Simple, Dorothy.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy maintains that she is not a witch, and Glinda finally resolves to accept this and tells Dorothy that this is Munchkin land and that she is their national heroine.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: She invites all of the Munchkins to come out and thank her, and there is a great celebration.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now, during the film's opening credits, there's one singular credit for the Munchkins, but I feel this is truly insufficient credit for what totaled 150 actors.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: And while I don't have the names for every actor who played a munchkin, I would like to at least give you the names of a few.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: The members of the Lullaby League included actresses Nita Krebs, Olga Nordone, and Yvonne Moray.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: The Lollipop Guild included Jackie Gurlich, Jerry Marin, and Harry Dahl.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: The coroner was played by Meinhart Rob A.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the Mayor of Munchkin Land was played by Charles Becker.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: But they did not voice the Munchkins as well.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: Those were played by voice actors.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think it's very interesting that the voices of the Lullaby League were provided by a group of three girls called the Debutants, and their voices can also be heard as the optimistic voices which sing in the poppy field when the witch's spell has been broken.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Two of the other Munchkin voices also have a Disney connection.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Billy Bletcher, who had a few solo lines in Ding Dong The Witch is Dead, including his declaration that Dorothy will go down in history and will be a bust, was the voice of Mickey Mouse's rival Pete, and also the voice of the big bad wolf.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: And Pinto Kolvig, whose voice can be heard as the munchkin asking, which old witch, was also the voice of Sleepy and Grumpy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And at this time in 1938, he was best known as being the voice of Goofy.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that funny?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another factor fantasy! The Munchkins were drunks.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: Much has been said about the actors who played the Munchkins and their behavior during production, and many long-standing rumors alleged that they were drunken, sex-crazed individuals who wreaked havoc on and offset.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: According to Mervyn LeRoy, quote, they got into sex orgies at the hotel.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: We had to have police on every floor.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Noel Langley said, quote, they raided the lot.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: The showgirls had to be escorted in bunches by armed guards.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: Famously, Judy Garland claimed on The Jack Parr show that, quote, they were drunks.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: They got smashed every night, and the police had to pick them up in butterfly nets.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: These rumors are largely untrue.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: They were not pimps and whores, as the legends claim.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the men and some of the women did regularly get drunk as Culver City was full of bars and the patrons there enjoyed buying drinks for them.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: And most nights the studio police were taking at least one of.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Them home.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: But there was very little trouble amongst the actors who played the Munchkins as a whole.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: However, according to Al Jean Harmetz, one of them, quote, did bite the leg of an MGM policeman who was barring his way.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: A few women did offer themselves to shocked stagehands and electricians.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: Several of the men carried knives and grandly brandished them with masculine oaths and all-encompassing threats.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Memories are distorted because the activities of a few were applied to all.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: But the celebrations come to a screeching halt.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: When in a big ball of red smoke, the wicked witch appears.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: She's played by Margaret Hamilton, who, of course, we knew as Miss Gulch in Kansas.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that both roles are played by Margaret Hamilton is very important storytelling to the film, in my opinion, because it takes the role of the Wicked Witch, who plays a seemingly insignificant part in El Frank Baum's book and turns her into the embodiment of Dorothy's subconscious fears.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Just like one's own anxiety, she lurks behind and is always watching, always threatening Dorothy's safety.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy says that she thought she was dead, and Glinda informs her that this is her sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, who's worse than the other one.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Here we see Margaret Hamilton in full form as the terrifying Wicked Witch of the West.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: She has green skin, a tall pointed black hat, matching black medieval style gown, and a broomstick.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: Margaret Hamilton's prosthetic included a fake nose, chin, and wart.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: And once they were glued on, her eyebrows were thickened, and her face, arms, and hands were painted green.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, from the time I got my makeup on, I was immobilized.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: If I touched my costume, it would be streaked with green.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't do anything for myself.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: A few weeks before production ended, Margaret Hamilton actually realized that her skin had taken on a green tinge.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: She said, quote, I suppose the stuff gradually sort of sunk into my skin.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: It must have been months before my face was really normal again.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: So now it's time for another deep dive of what took place during this scene, and this one comes from Al Jean Harmetz's book, The Making of the Wizard of Oz.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: She says, quote, Betty Denko was standing in an eight-foot deep pit underneath stage 27, waiting to be catapulted to the floor of the stage.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: It was Betty Denko, not Margaret Hamilton, who would be making the Wicked Witch's first entrance into Munchkinland.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: The top of the pit was covered by a thin piece of aluminum painted to look like the yellow brick road.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: The aluminum would be jerked away by an invisible wire, and she would spring, rather like a jack in the box, into the scene.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: Smudge pots and long smoke tubes would produce enough fire and red smoke to keep the audience from being aware of the trickery.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: During the last rehearsal, dance director Bobby Connolly fell through the pit's aluminum roof and landed on Betty Denko's shoulders.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: He'd been showing the Munchkins how to avoid the metal pitfall for the seventh or perhaps the tenth time when he slipped.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Connolly, a kind, polite, balding Irishman who always wore a coat suit and tie, was mortified.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: He chewed furiously on his cigar, his usual gesture of nervousness, while he was being pulled out.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: After Connolly had been dusted off, the smashed piece of metal on top of Betty Denko's head was removed, her witch's hat repaired, a new piece of metal inserted into the floor, and the scene photographed without further trouble.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: Afterward, Bobby Cachet, Judy's stand-in, found Betty Denko, a chiropractor.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now the Wicked Witch of the West sees her sister's dead body, then Dorothy, and asks, Who killed my sister?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Was it you?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy tells her that it was an accident, and Glinda reminds the witch of the ruby slippers.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: And Glinda says, Hey, yeah, huh?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: What about her shoes?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: Have you checked out the ruby slippers?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Which oh suddenly, she goes looking for the shoes, finds the shoes are gone, and Glinda says, BABAM! They're on Dorothy's feet.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think about that?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're move.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: So suddenly, Miss WWW, she's also gotta play the player.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she's gotta play the field.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, gosh.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: She tries to reason with Dorothy, you know?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: She says, Hey, give me the shoes.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the only one who knows how to use them.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now she's just played her whole hand.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because, oh, you're telling me these are valuable.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're telling me these have power.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, they're made of rubies.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why am I gonna give them to you?
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: But here's Glinda.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: She comes in for the for the play.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Keep tight inside of them.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Oh! Glinda's not about to lose her power at this moment.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: You keep tight inside of them.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Don't listen to her.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Don't listen to her.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: She's ugly.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: She must be a bad witch.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: You keep tight inside of them.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: Their magic must be very powerful, or she wouldn't want them so badly.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so now Dorothy's Dorothy's in the in the middle of this.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, she doesn't really know who to listen to.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: Again, she's she's brand new here.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: And they're both they're both vying for her attention.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: Here comes the wicked witch.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: You stay out of this, Glinda.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh God.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Or I'll fix you as well.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: And Glinda says, Oh, rubbish.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Be gone with you before somebody drops a house on you, too.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: That really does it.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: That cooks that cooks WW.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: She's gotta suddenly take a step back.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: She's gotta reevaluate here.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: This isn't her playing field, this isn't her territory.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: So she says, Okay, you know what?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: Very well.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'll bide my time.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: But as for you, my pretty, true, I can't take care of you here and now as I'd like to, but you just try to stay out of my way.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Just try.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: I look at you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: And she makes a fabulous exit in a big ball of red smoke and she's gone.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I'm gonna go.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: What about you?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: After the witch's departure, Glinda tells Dorothy that she has made a bad enemy of the Wicked Witch of the West, of course, because, you know, as any natural dictator, she needs to keep her isolated, and that the sooner she gets out of Oz altogether, the safer she'll sleep.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy asks her how to return to Kansas, and Glinda suggests that she follow the Yellowbrick Road to the Emerald City, where she may seek counsel with the all-powerful Wizard of Oz.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Glinda tells Dorothy that the Emerald City is a long journey from Munchkinland, and stupidly asks her if she brought her broomstick with her.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: Understanding that she'll never be able to get the fact that she's not a witch through Glinda's thick skull, Dorothy tells Glinda that her broomstick is in the shop.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: And before parting, Glinda gives Dorothy a kiss on the forehead.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: And this is actually a subtle nod to the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which the Good Witch of the North gives Dorothy a kiss on her forehead as a means for protection.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: Knowing that there is nothing further that she could say that would be of any use to anyone, Glinda makes off in her bubble for the sale at Bergdorf's.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: And Dorothy is then chased out of town by pushy munchkins who want her gone so bad that she can't even walk down the road and is being forced to skip on her way out of Munchkinland.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another fact or fantasy, America's favorite game show.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: Fact or fantasy.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Billy Burke's Glinda costume was not an original costume, but was a repurposed one.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: A photo comparison of Billy Burke as Glinda the Goodwitch and Jeanette McDonald in the 1936 film San Francisco has been going around for years with claims being made that Glinda's iconic pink fairy gown was just the old costume worn by McDonald, repurposed for Oz.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: And this is not only untrue, but it also diminishes the scale of Oz's production and the imagination and artistry of the film's costume designer, Adrian.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Adrian was the premier costume designer at MGM and was known for creating iconic, dreamlike costumes for actresses such as Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Gene Harlow, Catherine Hepburn, and Norma Shearer.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: And during his years designing for film, his work would set trends in high fashion.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: For a film like The Wizard of Oz, he would never have reused older costumes just to cut corners.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: Mervyn LeRoy even touched on this in an editorial posted in July of 1939, stating, quote, it even took two weeks of tests to select the right hairdress and farm girl frock for Judy Garland, the correct makeup for Frank Morgan, the green face of Margaret Hamilton, and the fairy costume of Billy Burke.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, everything had to be made to order.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing could be taken out of stock.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: Besides, a close look at the construction of both gowns really totally eliminates any possibility of there being the same garment.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: We transition to the next scene where Dorothy arrives at a fork in the road.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: To her left is a cornfield with a sole scarecrow hung up on a post.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: This scene was filmed on stage 26.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Unsure which direction to take, Dorothy asks herself, which way do we go?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: And much to her surprise, the scarecrow answers her.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: She has a minor cardiac episode.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Before she discovers that the scarecrow can speak and helps him down from his post, she learns that he doesn't have a brain and offers to take him along on her journey to meet the wizard.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy suggests that with any luck, the wizard would be able to use his powers to help him get some brains.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: The scarecrow is played by Ray Bulger, who we first saw as Hunk in the Kansas scenes.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in March of 1938, Mervyn LeRoy told Ray Bulger that he was to be cast as the Tin Woodsman.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: But according to Ray Bulger, decades later, he was adamant about playing the Scarecrow.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: He said that he was not a tin performer, he was fluid.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: Buddy Ebsen had been cast in the role of the Scarecrow, and even though he had begun costume fittings and dance rehearsals for the part, Ray Bulger did not let up.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: He was determined to play the Scarecrow.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: His insistence eventually wore down the studio, and Ebson didn't object to changing roles.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: Buddy said, quote, I wanted to be in the picture because I knew it would be a very big one, and it's always good to be associated with a big project.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, keep on dreaming, Buddy.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: More on him later.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now the tune for If I Only Had a Brain, Heart, and Nerve had already been written by Harold Arlin and Yip Harburg for a show called Hooray for What?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: Which is usually what people call my show when I tell them the name of it.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: For Oz, Harburg simply wrote new lyrics.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: So in this scene, the Scarecrow tells Dorothy that he's not afraid of anything except a lighted match.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: But in one of the script treatments by Ryerson and Wolf, they wrote additional dialogue for this, in which the scarecrow says, Quote, I was crazy about a girl once.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'd have married her, only her mother told me she smoked in bed.
• 54:50
  unknown: What?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: Mr.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: Scarecrow! This is a children's picture.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Ryerson and Wolf, I want you in my office now.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: Bring me the ruler and drop your pants.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: The funny thing about this is that it would have been censored by the Hayes Code if it had even made it into the final film anyway, so it doesn't matter.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another fact or fantasy.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: Fact or fantasy.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: Ray Bulger's costume was filled with asbestos.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is a regrettable fact.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: The scarecrow costume was padded with asbestos in order to make it flame-proof, as his character had two run-ins with fire.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yikes.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy and the Scarecrow skip down the yellow brick road until they enter a forest, which was likely built on stage 26.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: As Dorothy and the Scarecrow enter the forest, we briefly see the Wicked Witch hiding behind a tree, lurking.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: This was due to the influence of screenwriters Florence Ryerson and Edgar Alan Wolfe.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: The two turned in four pages of notes after they had been assigned to work on Oz and said, Quote, We feel Dorothy's desperate desire to get home should be dramatized more fully.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: We feel that the menace of the Wicked Witch of the West is not used enough.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, we should like to see the witch slinking through the wood, whispering to the trees, and the trees nodding their heads.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: I know that the witch's scenes were largely cut back because they were too terrifying for children, but I would have loved to have seen this.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_02: After fighting with talking apple trees, Dorothy discovers a man made out of tin who is rusted solid.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's time for another deep dive.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: The Tinsmith, played here by Jack Haley, was originally to be portrayed by Buddy Epson.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: For Epson's Tin Man makeup, they glued a prosthetic nose and chin on Ebsen, covering his face in white makeup and then powdering his face with aluminum dust.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: In 1938, pure aluminum dust was considered harmless.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: According to the National Library of Medicine, quote, the first cases of lung damage from exposure during aluminum processing were reported in the 1930s in Germany.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was in 1934 that the first case ever of pulmonary fibrosis was reported.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: Ebsen says, quote, one night after dinner, I took a breath and nothing happened.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: They got an ambulance and had me down to Good Samaritan for a couple of weeks.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: My lungs were coated with that aluminum dust that they had been powdering on my face.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_02: God, that's terrifying.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: According to Ebson, while bedridden and under an oxygen tent in the Good Samaritan hospital, the calls from MGM started pouring through.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, it seemed they couldn't understand that an actor could get sick.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: They were furious.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: Mervin LeRoy kept calling the hospital and saying, he can't be in bed.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: He's due on set, which is the craziest, most insane reaction to have to somebody being in the hospital.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: With Epson intent on just lying in bed all day, Mervin LeRoy finally hired Jack Haley.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: Jack Haley was under contract with 20th Century Fox, but he had no say in his being loaned to MGM.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: With Haley in for the Tin Man, there was one all-important change to the makeup.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: The aluminum was incorporated into a paste, which was painted onto Jack Haley's face.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: While Haley did not suffer any lung damage, he did suffer an infection in his right eye, which kept him off the set for four days.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: Luckily, doctors were able to treat the infection before there was any permanent damage.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a very interesting fact, though.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: Even though Jack Haley replaced Buddy Epson and re-recorded most of his songs, Epson's voice can still be heard in the quartet version of We're Off to See the Wizard, sung by Dorothy Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Lion.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that interesting?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: Go and give it a listen.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: You can hear him.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy and the Scarecrow begin brushing off the Tin Man when they hear him work out the words Oil can through his affixed lips.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: They quickly locate his oil can and begin oiling his mouth and joints.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: He tells them that a year ago he was chopping down a tree when it began to rain and he rusted solid.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: But the worst of his problems is in the fact that he doesn't have a heart.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_02: Really, Tin Man?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think the worst of my problems would be the fact that I was made out of tin and rusted solid for a year in the forest.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: But okay.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: When the Tin Man sings If I Only Had a Heart, we do hear a soft angelic voice chime in from off-screen, which asks, Wherefore art thou, Romeo?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the vocalist who recorded this line was actually Adriana Casalti, the voice of Snow White.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: Snow White really did have such a huge impact on this film, and this is not the last time we'll be talking about that.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: When Jack Haley began filming his scenes for the Wizard of Oz in November of 1938, they put him in Buddy Epson's tin suit, which was shiny and new.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: And they filmed his scenes for three days before realizing that he was meant to have rusted solid in the wood for a year.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so when director Victor Fleming explained this to Mervyn LeRoy, LeRoy insisted that the Wizard of Oz would be done right or not at all.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: And all the previously filmed material had to be scrapped and reshot.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: And this cost the production an estimated$60,000.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's a pretty rough mistake to make.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy and the Scarecrow invite the Tin Man to join them on their quest to meet the wizard.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: Suddenly, the wicked witch appears on a nearby roof.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: She threatens them all before vanishing in a puff of red smoke.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: Which is how I am at any function.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: More specifically, the witch threatens to stuff a mattress with the scarecrow and to use the tin man for a beehive.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: Now, originally, after the witch's disappearance, bees were going to spew uh out of the tin man's mouth, ears, and the funnel tip of his cap.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: And this was actually shot for the film, and the effect was achieved by using a combination of real bees, for which a bee wrangler was present on set, as well as animated bees, specifically for the ones coming from the Tin Man.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's much too gross, though.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not entirely sure I'd actually want to see that in the film.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I can understand why it was cut.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: The three of them skip off down the yellow brick road deeper into the forest.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: This deeper, dense, and also very large and impressive forest set was also built on stage 26.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: The group is getting tense and fearful due to the foreboding forest, and this prompts them to sing about lions and tigers and bears.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise known as the worst pride parade ever.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, silly.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: Here, a lion, portrayed by Bert Lauer, comes bounding out of the thicket.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: The only thing that you could even see of Bert Lauer was his eyes.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else was prosthetic, and he wore a real lion skin which was padded.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, but with the prosthetics on his face, he couldn't even open his mouth wide enough to eat solid food.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_02: He could only eat whatever he could sip through a straw.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, none of them were even able to eat in the studio commissary, as the patrons felt they were too hideous to look at.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: I myself have been thrown out of many a restaurant for the same offense.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_02: So they reached an agreement.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: The three of them would eat their lunch in a bungalow that they shared if the studio would pay for their lunch, which is pretty, pretty good deal making, if you ask me.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: The lion raises his paws like a boxer and tells them to all put 'em up, put 'em up.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: The scarecrow and Tin Man are too scared to fight him, but when he lunges at Toto, Dorothy runs up and slaps him on the nose, and the lion begins to cry.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's here that we learn that he, in fact, has no courage.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy begins to feel empathetic towards the lion's troubles and allows him to join their group.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's funny because due to the Hayes Code, the Cowardly Lion could not refer to himself as a sissy for the release of the film in Great Britain, because the term was synonymous with being a homosexual.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: And because of this, the UK soundtrack was dubbed with the lion saying the word prissy, which I don't think did him any favors, really.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: Next, there's a transition, and we now find ourselves on stage 28 in the Witch's Tower, watching Dorothy and her friends through the witch's crystal ball.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: She decides to take care of them now and draws forth a smoking mortar and pestle, which she waves across the crystal ball.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: She creates something with poison in it, but attractive to the eye and soothing the smell.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_02: Poppies.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: There is a dissolved transition, and we now see poppies, hundreds of thousands of them, rolling hills brimming with vibrant red poppies as far as the eye can see.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: She responds to this with the same joyful expression that I have when I see a deadly cocktail that I know is gonna kill me.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, poppies! What?
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: Who did this?
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_02: How did this get here?
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: How did they know?
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_02: At last, Dorothy and her friends spot the glittering Emerald City.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now, attempting to design the Emerald City proved difficult as there was nothing to draw from.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: Cedric Gibbons, head of the art department, eventually solved this conundrum.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: According to Jack Martin Smith, who was the sketch artist on The Wizard of Oz, Gibbons had discovered an extremely small photo of a sketch that had been created in Germany prior to World War I in the Central Research Library at MGM.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, we looked at the sketch.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: It actually looked like test tubes upside down, and it crystallized our ideas.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_02: We all thought the German sketch was right because it wasn't detailed.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't look like Reims Cathedral.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't look like the pyramids.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: It looked like some strange thing we had never seen before.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_02: Overjoyed, they run through the poppy field toward the towering turrets.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: But on the way, Dorothy feels faint and can't run anymore.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: She looks for Toto, who's already asleep, surrounded by the pungent flowers.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy then collapses, and the cowardly lion soon follows in suit.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: The scarecrow and Tin Man, the only two not made of flesh and blood, are not susceptible to the witch's spell.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_02: But just as the scarecrow begins crying for help, Glinda the Good Witch sends a magical snowstorm which awakens them all.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another factor fantasy! Factor fantasy! Glinda's magical snow is made of asbestos.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: It has been widely circulated for years that the effect of the magical snow sent by Glinda to wake Dorothy and her friends in the poppy field was achieved by dropping small pieces of white fluffy asbestos from the top of the set and coating the actors below.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_02: But this is untrue.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was actually Gibson.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: Which isn't much better.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now, after Glinda awakens Dorothy and her friends, we cut to the Wicked Witch.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_02: Nico, her monkey, hands her something golden and she quickly discards it.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I always wondered what this was, but in my research, I discovered that there was actually a cut scene here.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: So in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book, there is this thing called a golden cap.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the golden cap can be used by the person who wears it three times to summon the winged monkeys for help.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: And after the third time, the winged monkeys can't be summoned by that person, and the gold cap has to be used by somebody else in order to summon them.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: But in the book, The Road to Oz, the Evolution, Creation, and Legacy of a Motion Picture Masterpiece, it's explained thusly quote, Nico the monkey has retrieved the golden cap at the witch's instruction so that the witch can command the winged monkeys to steal Dorothy's slippers.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: This portion of the scene was cut from the final film with no explanation given for the appearance of the golden cap.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_02: But still, that makes for such a great Easter egg for any fans of the book who sees it.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad it's in there.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: As Dorothy and her friends skip down the yellow brick road to the hopeful tune of the optimistic voices, the witch boards her broomstick and flies out the window toward the Emerald City.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: Next, we transition to the Emerald City Gates on stage 15.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_02: When Dorothy arrives at the gates, she pulls on a bell rope and rings the bell and out pops the doorman played by Frank Morgan.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, screenwriters Florence Ryerson and Edgar Alan Wolfe were responsible for the multiple kooky characters, all played by Frank Morgan.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: In their notes on the original script treatment by Noel Langley, they wrote, quote, If we establish the character in the prologue, perhaps a quaint old medicine man, then some way should be devised to introduce him in the later sequences.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps he appears as the gate man who leads them into Oz, wearing green whiskers, as the man who drives the horse of a different color, wearing purple whiskers, and again as the guard at the door of the audience chamber wearing red whiskers.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_02: This would give us a chance to use a man like Frank Morgan without having the audience feel cheated because they didn't see enough of him, which would certainly happen if he is only used once, as in the present script.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_02: The doorman opens the gates, and we catch our first glimpse of the great green metropolis.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: The entire city is painted in hues of green with a modern art deco design.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: The Emerald City citizens all stop and stare at Dorothy and her group, recognizing from their attire alone that they're clearly not from here.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_02: Now the Emerald City gaze are already on their bullshit.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, who is this queen?
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_02: Why is she wearing a picnic blanket?
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_02: And what what's with her posse?
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_02: Did they all just arrive from the island of misfit toys?
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm confused.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_02: Not missing a beat.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_02: Judy?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't get past them.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_02: Suddenly, a horse-drawn carriage pulls up with a snow white horse and Frank Morgan as the driver.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, you guessed it, old Frankie's back.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: Surprisingly enough, the carriage that Frank Morgan is driving had a long history before being used as transportation in the Emerald City.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_02: As a matter of fact, it was a gift made for President Abraham Lincoln.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was made during the Civil War, and it was used in over 200 motion pictures.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: But it's currently on perpetual display at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_02: Go and see it.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_02: The driver announces himself as a cabbie and offers to take them any place in the city.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy asks if he can take them to see the wizard, and he reluctantly agrees, but says that he'll take them to a place where they can tidy up a bit.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy thanks him, and Dorothy actually said, Dorothy says, Thank you so much.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_02: We've been traveling for such a long time and we feel so mess.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of a horse is that?
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Very rude.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy, you just arrived in this place.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_02: You're already making a terrible first impression.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, you're not wearing green.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_02: What the hell is this?
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Secondly, you're gonna come over here and comment on their multicolored horses, which is amazing.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Who would be upset about seeing a multicolored horse?
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Judy, apparently.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: She's got a bad history with them.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_02: As the camera pans out, we see that the snow white horse has changed to purple.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_02: The cabbie tells them that he's the horse of a different color that they've heard tell about.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the cab drives them through the Emerald City while the cabbie and the citizens sing the Merry Old Land of Oz, and the horse continues to change colors as they go.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another fact or fantasy, Emerald City style.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Fact or fantasy.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_02: The horse of a different color got its vibrant color from jello powder.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that cute?
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was reported by Hollywood columnist Frederick C.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Offman that to create the horse of a different color, white horses were colored by being sponged down with jello powder.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this was made difficult only by the fact that the horses managed to lick off most of the jello between shots.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Very cute, but this is in fact fiction.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_02: I know I'm just as disappointed as you are.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: In 1939, there was no purple or blue colored jello.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's a little history fact you didn't think you were to get today.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_02: The only flavors were raspberry, lime, lemon, strawberry, cherry, and orange.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, the horses were painted with vegetable dyes.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Not as delicious, but they do the job.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: The horse is seen in four different colors: white, purple, red, and yellow.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the horse was also colored blue, but it was cut from the final film.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_02: However, the colors were meant to represent the four countries of the land of Oz.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Gillickins, which were purple, quadlings, red, winkies, yellow, and munchkins blue.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that so interesting?
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so sad that that was cut.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, that's our little factor fantasy for you.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_02: The cabbie brings them to a place called the Wash and Brush Up Company, which was housed on stage 28.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Here, the scarecrow is stuffed with fresh straw, the tin man is shined, Dorothy has her hair done, and the cowardly lion receives a perm.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: All in all, they had a lovely afternoon in the Emerald City.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_02: We should come here more often.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's worth noting that the men stuffing the scarecrow with straw are wearing graphic t-shirts with Oz printed on them.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is the first documented use of graphic tees in film.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_02: In the 1930s, t-shirts were only worn as undergarments and wouldn't make their way into mainstream fashion until after World War II.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_02: This is when we see uh people like James Dean, you know, wearing uh t-shirts just as stylish look.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Merriman is cut short when suddenly everyone stops laughing to look upward in fear.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Up in the sky, we see the wicked witch flying on her broomstick.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_02: She uses black smoke billowing out of her broom to skyright a message.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the threat first appeared in Noel Langley's script dated June 27th, 1938, as give me Dorothy and her slippers or I'll destroy your city, WWW.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Bit of a mouthful, she's probably very dizzy at the end of that one.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_02: But in the revision, two days later, it became Surrender Dorothy or Die, WWW.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And this was the message that was written for the film, but in post, it was cut down simply to surrender Dorothy.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the pity.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Then we see what would be my role in the film.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Two Emerald City citizens who look fabulous, by the way.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_02: They look up at the sky and they cry out, Dorothy?
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Who's Dorothy?
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's unpack this for just a moment, shall we?
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Clearly, these bitches came out to have a few mimosas, over a late brunch, maybe do a little shopping.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they have absolutely no knowledge of this a-plot.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_02: The many trials and tribulations of Dorothy are not even on their radar.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_02: What Dorothy Dorothy?
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the wicked wish?
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_02: Which which which uh which witch?
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm convinced that if you tried to talk to them about the stock market crash of 1929, they'd be like, the what?
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I love them.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so suddenly there's a commotion in the Emerald City, and all of the citizens now want answers from the wizard.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_02: An Emerald City Guard tells them all that the great and powerful Oz has matters well in hand and sends them all home.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy tells the guard that they need to see the wizard right away, and he refuses until the scarecrow informs him that she's Dorothy.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when the Emerald City Guard turns Dorothy and her friends away, there was going to be a comedic changing of the guards moment where one guard played by Frank Morgan was going to have a mustache that was fiercely turned up, and then he was going to march importantly into a guard box, turn around, and come back out with a mustache turned fiercely down.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's so funny.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it was shot, but it was ultimately cut.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_02: The guard then leaves to announce their arrival to the wizard, and the cowardly lion sings, if I were king of the forest and we were never the same again.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Cinema never knew a moment's peace after this.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Am I okay?
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Can we can we be honest here?
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Can we have a little conversation?
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Can we talk?
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Am I the only one?
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_02: Am I alone here in my deep, unadulterated hatred of this number?
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: I can't be.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Surely I can't.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_02: I know it was made for vaudeville, but really, of all the numbers in this film, it's the one that I skipped.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it's funny to me that there are so many good numbers.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_02: There are so many good scenes and good moments that were actually filmed and cut in the end for time.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_02: But we kept every last delicious morsel of that number.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't understand for the life of me why.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, no, that's not true.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was initially a little bit longer and it was trimmed down.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I digress.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_02: When the guard returns, he tells them that the wizard said, Go away.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Heartbroken, Dorothy begins to cry, feeling guilty about the pain that she caused Aunt Em.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_02: This brings the guard to comedically overdone tears, and he tells them that he'll get them in to see the wizard somehow.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_02: The doors open, and the four of them make their way down a long corridor to the wizard's chamber.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_02: They stand before a large throne, quaking in their boots until the wizard appears to them as a giant floating green head in a cloud of smoke.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_02: He tells them that he will grant them their requests if they bring him the broomstick of the wicked witch of the West.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_02: The Tin Man points out that they'll have to kill her to get it.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_02: But the wizard does not back down.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_02: He tells them to go, and the lion, terrified, runs away and jumps through a glass window.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Frank Milton, who was responsible for this effect, said, quote, You couldn't do today the things we did then.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_02: The health department wouldn't let you.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_02: We heated resin and poured it on a pool of mercury.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Then we cooled the mercury down.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_02: Mercury! There was almost no ventilation.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now I wonder, how did I get through all those nights?
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's a wonder anyone got through all these nights, to be honest with you.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_02: We fade in from black, and we are now in the haunted forest.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_02: This large and eerie forest was built on stage 26.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_02: We see a spooky tree which appears to have a face, and we hear the sounds of menacing birds.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_02: The camera pans down to a sign that reads, Haunted Forest, Witch's Castle, one mile.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'd turn back if I were you.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that the sign was made by some random traveler.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the witch made this.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_02: I can just see her in her tower room constructing and painting this sign, going, I turn back if I were you.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_02: I also think the sign's really funny because okay, I'm an English major, so bear with me.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_02: But does this bother anyone else?
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's spelled witches, W-I-T-C-H-E-S, which is which is plural for witch, as in multiple witches, but it should actually be W-I-T-C-H apostrophe s to mean possessive, you know, the witch's castle.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_02: She owns this shit.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_02: I just it bothers me, but it's a cross I bear.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now we see each of Dorothy's friends brandishing weapons.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Let's walk through this together.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_02: The scarecrow has a giant wobbly walking stick as if he's the wizard Merlin, and he's also got a Glock.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now, it's meant listen, no, it's meant to be a water pistol, but as I don't see anything come out of this gun, to me, it's a glock.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I think the scarecrow's packing heat.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is this is shocking, but it remains in the final film.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_02: The lion has a butterfly net, like this is a Looney Tunes cartoon, and he's also got a giant spray bottle labeled Witch Remover, which incidentally is just filled with Elizabeth Taylor's white diamonds.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, of course, the Tin Man has his usual axe, but he's also carrying a wrench.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_02: He had to choose one weapon in order to destroy the greatest evil that the land of Oz knows.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he chose a wrench?
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_02: You are killing the wicked witch of the West, my guy, not assembling occasional furniture on IKEA.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I I don't understand, but choices were made.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy has no weapons.
• 1:20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy is unarmed.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_02: She plans to tell the witch off in song, so now there was a cut scene here where the lion says that he doesn't believe that his witch remover even works.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And he tosses it, and when it hits the ground, it vanishes.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then it cuts to the scarecrow saying, I believe there's spooks around here.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but that's why, if you notice, you'll see the lion is carrying his witch remover, and then in the next shot, it's gone.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Which I think is so funny, the inconsistency there.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in the Haunted Forest, we see two vultures.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mentioned earlier that Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves influenced talks about creating a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, but it did more than just that.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_02: There are several parallels between the two films.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_02: The I'm Wishing song in Snow White inspired Over the Rainbow, Hi Ho Hi Ho, likely inspired We're Off to See the Wizard, and this is yet another mirrored image.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_02: The two vultures from Snow White are seen here in Oz's Haunted Forest with glowing red eyes.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Earlier in production, there were going to be a few other references to Snow White, including Dorothy dreaming about her prince charming and fainting at the sight of the skeletons, The Witch's Closet, but these were ultimately cut, thank God.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't bear it.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, funnily enough, the Wicked Witch's green skin was also inspired by Snow White.
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Witches in film at the time weren't depicted with green skin, and if they had uh makeup applied to alter their skin tone, it was only to make them more orange or red.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_02: However, Mervyn LeRoy was in direct correspondence with Walt Disney, and Walt had beautiful stationery which featured the characters from Snow White, and down at the bottom of it was Snow White's Wicked Witch, whose skin was painted with a deep green hue as she's hovering over her caultron.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_02: We cut to the witch's tower, where the witch is once again watching the gang below.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_02: She sends her flying monkeys to capture Dorothy and Todo and tells them to send a little insect ahead to take the fight out of them.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_02: In a terrifying spectacle, she tells her packs of monkeys to fly, and we see hordes of them soaring past her tower.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_02: This scene is one of my favorites.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I love it.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's so chilling.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_02: The music, the score, just the trilling notes, and then at the same time seeing the witch wave her hand and seeing all of these terrifying monkeys flying and flying and continuously flying.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's so effective.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Such good storytelling.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_02: I also want to note that the witch's theme is actually a variation of we're off to see the wizard.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you listen to that, you'll hear what I'm talking about.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_02: To make the wicked witch's flying monkeys fly, miniature monkeys were cast out of rubber in varying sizes, each only a few inches high, and they were hung from the gantry just like the Muslim tornado using pieces of piano wire.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_02: On this effect, Buddy Gillespie said, quote, What was difficult was the tremendous amount of rigging.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_02: There were about 1,100 wires, four wires on each monkey.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Inside each monkey, there was a little lightweight metal armature which hinges to the wings so that the wings would be sufficiently flexible.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was tough to do because of the number of wires.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_02: If one wire broke in the middle of a scene and the monkey would go half cocked, we'd have to redo a take.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Jack McMaster recalled that, quote, one morning we came in and one of the main wires was down and the whole mess was on the ground.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I was curious to know if any of these little freaks still existed, so I did a little digging, and it turns out they do.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Only a few of them are known to exist.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Some allegedly are in private collections, but two of them are in the collection of the Oz Museum in Womago, Kansas.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_02: They also take great care in conserving the pieces, such as these monkeys, and you'll be glad to know that within the past few years they invested in conservation treatments to the incredible sum of$12,000.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Good on you.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now you'll remember that I said the wicked witch told her monkeys to send a little insect ahead to take the fight out of them.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_02: This was meant to be another challenge for the group on their way to kill the witch.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_02: The jitterbugs, which were to look like pink and blue mosquitoes, were likely inspired by the stinging bees which descend upon Dorothy and her friends in L Frank Baum's book.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_02: The jitterbug number took five weeks and cost$80,000 to film, but it was ultimately cut from the picture after the first preview.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_02: The picture was too long as it is, and the song was the least necessary of all of them in regards to advancing the plot.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_02: But don't worry, folks, we won't lose one juicy moment of if I were King of the Forest.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_02: But they were also worried the song would date the film, as the jitterbug was a popular dance at the time.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_02: And this number was just the type of thing that fans of the Oz books were worried about when Judy was initially cast in the film.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_02: On April 29th, 1938, Hollywood reporter Paul Harrison wrote, quote, The assumption is that Judy will introduce swing music into the Emerald City and will teach the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman how to do the Big Apple.
• 1:26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they'll change the title to The Wizard of Jazz.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Tacky as it was.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Two months later, he revisited this when he reported, quote, as this department pessimistically predicted months ago, Judy Garland will sing swing tunes in The Wizard of Oz.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_02: The first number written for her is called Jitterbug.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_02: They'll be trucking in the Emerald City and Big Appling in the land of munchkins and whirling in the grave of El Frank Baum.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, get up, Frankie, it's time to dance.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_02: We next transition back to the haunted forest, where the flying monkeys swoop down on them all.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_02: They corner the Tin Man and Lion, tear the scarecrow apart, and abscond with Dorothy and Toto.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's a dissolve to an exterior shot of the witch's castle created by a gorgeous matte painting, and then a fade to the tower room where the witch is petting Toto.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now we fade in on the witch petting Toto in the way of someone who's never pet a dog in their life.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And don't get me wrong, it's great that she's choosing to pet Toto as opposed to harm him, but it just looks a little too aggressive.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like when a kid comes up and asks, you know, can I pet your dog?
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, Yeah, sure.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they start just kind of like grabbing at them like they're needing dough.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, you don't want to yell at them because, you know, they're not necessarily hurting the dog, but it also just doesn't.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Look right.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um anyway, Todo's sitting there vaguely uncomfortable, trying to remain cool because he knows he's an enemy territory, but he's just kind of sitting there like, yes, yes, thank you.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_02: In the witch's tower, I also want to note we can see a lot of interesting details in the set design.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_02: For instance, there's an entire zodiac on the floor surrounding her crystal ball.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_02: The witch puts Toto into a basket and tells Dorothy that she'll give him back to her once she gives her the ruby slippers.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy tells her that the good witch of the north told her not to, and the witch tells her monkey Nico to throw the basket in the river and drown him.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_02: But Dorothy protests and says that she can have the shoes.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_02: The witch reaches down for them, but there's a magical shock that causes her to scream and wince in pain.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_02: The witch tells Dorothy that she should have known the shoes wouldn't come off as long as she's alive.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_02: Todo manages to escape the basket and flees the castle.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy's relieved that he got away, and the witch tells her that she's been more troubled than she's worth, but it will soon be over now.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_02: She turns over an hourglass to mark the amount of time that Dorothy has left to be alive and leaves the tower.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now, here there was to be a beautiful reprise of Over the Rainbow sung by Judy, and it was shot, but ultimately cut from the film because it was too heartbreaking.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_02: Judy's performance was so sad that not only was she in tears, but apparently so were the rest of the crew, who all broke down crying when they heard it.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_02: But it remains my favorite song from the film.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy sees Aunt M appear to her in the witch's crystal ball.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Aunt M is calling for her, and Dorothy responds that she's here in awe and trying to get home to her.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Aunt M vanishes and was replaced by the menacing witch, who laughs at her suffering.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_02: We transition back to the haunted forest, where Todo returns to the scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion and leads them back to the castle.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_02: The trio knock out three winky guards and steal their costumes in order to blend in with the rest.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_02: They infiltrate the witch's castle, rescue Dorothy from the tower, and very nearly make their way to freedom.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_02: But they're ultimately trapped.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_02: When the witch sets out to destroy them all, she sets fire to the scarecrow, and Dorothy throws a bucket of water to put it out.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_02: It soaks the witch, and she melts before their eyes.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Finally freed, the winky guards hail Dorothy and give her the witch's broom to take back to the wizard.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Here there was meant to be a reprise to Ding Dong The Witch's Dead, which included a parade through the Emerald City and Dorothy brandishing the witch's broomstick.
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was shot and cost an estimated$100,000, but was ultimately cut from the film for time.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_02: I would so have loved to have seen this sequence.
• 1:30:53
  SPEAKER_02: But as is, only stills exist, and a brief clip of it in the original Wizard of Oz theatrical trailer.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_02: We dissolve to the Wizard's Throne Room, where Dorothy presents the witch's broomstick to the wizard and informs him that they have melted her.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy asks him to keep his promise to them, and he tells them all to go away and come back tomorrow.
• 1:31:15
  SPEAKER_02: This angers the four of them and they protest his reluctance to keep his promise.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, Todo pulls open a curtain, hiding the real wizard, a simple old man of flesh and blood, played by Frank Morgan.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now, for the wizard, Mervyn Leroy wanted Ed Wynne.
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you don't know who Ed Wynne is just from his name, I'm sure you do know him.
• 1:31:37
  SPEAKER_02: He was the voice of the Mad Hatter in Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_02: He was also the man who loved to laugh in Mary Poppins.
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_02: And gosh, I so wish I could have seen him in this role because I know he would have been tremendous.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm not alone in this because EY, or Yip, as he was known, Harburg, called him the wished-for one and uh said we would have had to have given him a lot more puns.
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's ludicrous to think of it now.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_02: But if the MGM executives had gotten their first choices for the cast of the Wizard of Oz, they would have included Squirrely Bumble as Dorothy, Buddy Epson as the Scarecrow, Ray Bulger as the Tin Man, Ed Wynne as the Wizard, Gail Sundergaard as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Fanny Bryce as Glinda.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_02: But not to knock Fanny.
• 1:32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because after all, she's got 36 expressions.
• 1:32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Sweet as pie to tough as leather.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's six expressions more than all them uh baramores put together.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_02: The wizard then tells Dorothy's friends that they've all had what they felt they lacked all along.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_02: However, he gives them all gifts to certify their longed-for traits.
• 1:32:52
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Yip Harburg was actually responsible for adding the scene in which the wizard gives a diploma to the scarecrow and a testimonial to the tin man and a medal to the lion.
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_02: In Baum's novel, the wizard uh gives the scarecrow a head full of pins and needles, the tin man a chest full of red silk heart, and the lion a drink that when swallowed would turn to courage.
• 1:33:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I personally dislike the liquid courage for its allusion to liquor.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_02: A children's novel just doesn't seem right.
• 1:33:20
  SPEAKER_02: For Dorothy, the wizard proposes to fly her home in his hot air balloon.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_02: In the next scene, we dissolve to the Emerald City where a huge hot air balloon that reads Omaha is readied for flight.
• 1:33:31
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy and the wizard prepare to depart, but Toto leaps out of Dorothy's arms when he sees a cat being held by the most glamorous bitch you've ever seen in your life.
• 1:33:42
  SPEAKER_02: And Dorothy chases after him.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_02: The wizard flies off because he can't stop it.
• 1:33:46
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't know how it works.
• 1:33:47
  SPEAKER_02: What a man.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's time for another fact or fantasy.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_02: Fact or fantasy.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Frank Morgan carried a briefcase onto the set every morning that was filled with martinis.
• 1:34:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is a true fact.
• 1:34:08
  SPEAKER_02: According to his cast mates, including uh Margaret Hamilton, who worked with him on more than one film, uh, Morgan had a habit of drinking on the set, but most of the time he didn't appear to be in a drunken state.
• 1:34:20
  SPEAKER_02: Though there was when they were filming uh one of the scenes in the Emerald City when he played a guard, uh, a time when he was uh highly intoxicated and seemed to be uh holding on to the guard box for support.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Bless him.
• 1:34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy, heartbroken, says that she'll never get home.
• 1:34:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then Glinda appears and tells Dorothy that she's always had the power to get home, only she needed to find it out for herself.
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_02: But when she says this, the scarecrow gives her a scolding expression and asks her why she didn't tell her that before.
• 1:34:53
  SPEAKER_02: And Glinda says that's because she wouldn't have believed her.
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_02: The scarecrow thinks, yeah, you're lucky, I'm not pecking heat.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy says her heartfelt goodbyes to her friends.
• 1:35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, no, sorry.
• 1:35:07
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy says her goodbye to the scarecrow last and tells him I'll miss you most of all.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the lion and chinman are like, oh, uh sorry, Dorothy.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, let me ask you, if I wanted to uh go fuck myself, should I get on a hot air balloon and fly to Kansas?
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just wondering.
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_02: Where uh in the map of the land of Oz?
• 1:35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_02: So Dorothy follows Glinda's instructions to tap her heels together three times and think to herself, there's no place like home.
• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_02: We see a magical transition and the gale house falling back to earth.
• 1:35:55
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy awakens in her bed, being comforted by her Aunt Em.
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_02: All the farmhands are there, as well as Todo, Uncle Henry, and Professor Marvel.
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now, it's believed by some that the Wicked Witch of the West being crushed by Dorothy's house actually alludes to Miss Gulch having been killed in the cyclone, leading to an all-around happy ending for Dorothy and Todo.
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_02: But Dorothy is thrilled at being home and promises that she won't ever leave it again because, as she puts it, there's no place like home.
• 1:36:25
  SPEAKER_02: End of film.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought I'd take a moment to pause and reflect on my thoughts of the final film as a whole.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_02: The storytelling of the film is powerful.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_02: The screenwriters who adapted the story of the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, altered it in such a way that in the process, I believe they made it something even greater.
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_02: By changing the land of Oz from a real place to the conjurings of Dorothy's subconscious, the entire journey becomes a coming-of-age story.
• 1:37:06
  SPEAKER_02: Along her journey through Oz, Dorothy meets characters who are all ailing from lacking brains, heart, and courage.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_02: But we see Dorothy use all of those traits to not only help them, but to bring herself home.
• 1:37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Dorothy uses her brain to overcome her challenges and Oz, her heart to help and to care for those that she meets there, and her courage to stand up to the wizard and to conquer the wicked witch.
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of this, she's rewarded by learning how to bring herself home.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_02: And because of this, even the notion of home transcends being a physical place and becomes the idea of returning to oneself.
• 1:37:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is no longer the story of a simple farm girl who finds herself in a fairy tale world, but a story of psychological growth.
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk a bit about the production.
• 1:38:01
  SPEAKER_02: The final cost of the Wizard of Oz was$2,777,000.
• 1:38:09
  SPEAKER_02: And in its initial release, according to the studio's bookkeeping system, the Wizard of Oz had a net loss of roughly$1,000.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it took 20 years for the film to earn its money back.
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_02: However, it's likely that the Wizard of Oz was never intended to make money.
• 1:38:26
  SPEAKER_02: Fantasy films were known to be financial failures at the box office.
• 1:38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a rare exception.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_02: And according to E.Y.
• 1:38:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yip Harburg, quote, they didn't think they were going to make any money with the picture.
• 1:38:39
  SPEAKER_02: Once a year they did a loser for prestige.
• 1:38:42
  SPEAKER_02: And this is true because being there were so many rival studios at the time, you had MGM, Paramount, Columbia, Warner Brothers, it was important to MGM to kind of boast that they had the biggest and the best.
• 1:39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Frank Capra used to say that preview audiences anticipated the quality of a film by the studio which preceded it.
• 1:39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Columbia's Lady with a Torch usually caused groans, while MGM's Leo the Lion, or Paramount's Star Circled Mountain, brought anticipatory applause.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when The Wizard of Oz had its grand premier gala at Groman's Chinese Theater, no expense was spared.
• 1:39:25
  SPEAKER_02: And Hollywood correspondent Harold W.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Cohen covered the premiere in his column on August 20, 1939, stating, quote, thousands of flags floated lazily in the breeze.
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_02: A band kept playing the tunes from the picture as the stars stepped before the microphone to speak their little pieces.
• 1:39:42
  SPEAKER_02: Mile-long limousines spilled their beglamoured cargoes at the curb in an endless stream.
• 1:39:48
  SPEAKER_02: A dozen searchlights flashed crazily back and forth across the skies, and the air was charged with a thousand and one excitements.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was a Hollywood opening to end all Hollywood openings.
• 1:39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's talk about the reception to the film and its initial release.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_02: Screenwriter Noel Langley hated the final picture.
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_02: After he was dismissed from the film for the second time on October 31st, 1938, he was blissfully unaware of all the changes that were made until he saw the completed picture in theaters.
• 1:40:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in the 30s, writers were never invited to previews or premieres.
• 1:40:24
  SPEAKER_02: According to Langley, he saw The Wizard of Oz, quote, in a cinema on Hollywood Boulevard at noon, and I sat and cried like a bloody child.
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, this is a year of my life.
• 1:40:36
  SPEAKER_02: I loathed the picture.
• 1:40:38
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was dead.
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it missed the boat all the way around.
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_02: I had to wait for my tears to clear before I went out of the theater.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_02: Otis Ferguson shared his review in The New Republic.
• 1:40:48
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, The Wizard of Oz was intended to hit the same audience as Snow White and won't fail for lack of trying.
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_02: It has dwarves, music, technicolor, freak characters, and Judy Garland.
• 1:41:01
  SPEAKER_02: It can't be expected to have a sense of humor as well.
• 1:41:04
  SPEAKER_02: And as for the light touch of fantasy, it weighs like a pound of fruitcake soaking wet.
• 1:41:11
  SPEAKER_02: 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 the ticket window will be found at the Tarzan film down the street.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_02: The story, of course, has some lovely and wild ideas: men of straw and tin, a cowardly lion, a wizard who isn't a very good wizard, but the picture doesn't know what to do with them, except to be painfully literal and elaborate about everything.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Cecil B.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_02: DeMille, The 7,000 Dwarves by Actual Count.
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what he has to say about Judy Garland.
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_02: Quote, it isn't that this little slip of a miss spoils the fantasy so much as her thumping, overgrown gambles are characteristic of its treatment here.
• 1:41:54
  SPEAKER_02: When she is merry, the house shakes, and everybody gets wet when she is forlorn.
• 1:41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine missing the mark entirely on Judy Garland.
• 1:42:04
  SPEAKER_02: God.
• 1:42:04
  SPEAKER_02: On a different note entirely, Frank S.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Nugent of The New York Times said, quote, Not since Disney's Snow Whites has anything quite so fantastic seated half so well.
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_02: A fairy book tale has been told in the fairy book style, with witches, goblins, pixies, and other wondrous things drawn in the brightest colors.
• 1:42:23
  SPEAKER_02: It is all so well-intentioned, so genial, and so gay that any reviewer who would look down his nose at the fun making should be spanked and sent off supperless to bed.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's so funny.
• 1:42:36
  SPEAKER_02: Time, though their initial review in 1939 had been harsh, began a review of its 1949 re-release by saying, quote, The Wizard of Oz, dusted off and reissued, proves that true wizardry, whether in books or on the screen, is ageless.
• 1:42:53
  SPEAKER_02: In the magical land of Oz, nothing changes.
• 1:42:56
  SPEAKER_02: The whimsical gaiety, the lighthearted song and dance, the lavish Hollywood sets and costumes are as fresh and beguiling today as they were 10 years ago.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_02: The Wizard of Oz won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, and the award was won because of the songs written by E.
• 1:43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Y.
• 1:43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Harburg and Harold Arlen, yet it was picked up by Herbert Stothart, who wrote the incidental music that bridged the songs.
• 1:43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Very silly in retrospect, but that was common at the time.
• 1:43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Judy Garland also won the Juvenile Award for her work that year, including The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms.
• 1:43:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in its initial theatrical release, The Wizard of Oz lost MGM nearly a million dollars.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_02: The film's first re-release in 1948 brought it out of the negative, but it wasn't until its annual television broadcasts that the film truly became a financial as well as critical success.
• 1:43:51
  SPEAKER_02: As Al Jean Harmetz observed, quote, without the once-a-year repetition on television as a special, the film would not have been seen enough times for a new generation to become aware of it, nor would it have become an event rather than just another movie.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_02: And without Judy Garland's unique voice and tragic future being tied to over the rainbow so that one could never watch the frenzied self-caricature of her last years without being reminded of a time when rainbows were possible for her, the picture would never have taken on the qualities of poignancy, seriousness, and irony.
• 1:44:25
  SPEAKER_02: By its 18th broadcast in 1977, the Wizard of Oz had long since become an American institution.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Its characters were recognized and loved by children all over the world, and pop culture was full of its references to them.
• 1:44:39
  SPEAKER_02: The Library of Congress has declared that it is the most watched film ever.
• 1:44:44
  SPEAKER_02: And in 1939, the film was one of the first 25 films to be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being, quote, culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
• 1:44:59
  SPEAKER_02: In interviews during the 1970s, Mervyn LeRoy and Ray Bolger credited the film's lasting effect to its, quote, simple philosophy, that there's no place like home, that everybody has a heart, everybody has a brain, everybody has a soul.
• 1:45:13
  SPEAKER_02: Al Jean Harmetz also very rightly observes that the passage of time helped Oz because in 1939 most adults could remember vaudeville, but now the larger-than-life vaudevillian performances of Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, and Burt Lauer are just a reflection of the fantasy world of Oz.
• 1:45:33
  SPEAKER_02: And she writes, quote, it has been suggested that part of the movie's appeal lies in the fact that in it one sees Judy Garland restored.
• 1:45:42
  SPEAKER_02: It is more likely the deeper revelation of seeing one's own innocence restored, the innocence that allows one to return home.
• 1:45:51
  SPEAKER_02: If you're interested in learning more about this film and the production of it, I do have a few books that I'd love to recommend.
• 1:45:59
  SPEAKER_02: The Making of the Wizard of Oz by Al Jean Harmetz is a must.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_02: It gives you an overview of everything on the production.
• 1:46:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the road to Oz, the evolution, creation, and legacy of a motion picture masterpiece by Jay Scarfon and William Stillman is also a tremendous well of knowledge.
• 1:46:16
  SPEAKER_02: The Ruby Slippers of Oz by Rice Thomas will talk to you all about the journey of the Ruby Slippers, the actual prop from the film had after the film's completion, which is incredibly interesting.
• 1:46:29
  SPEAKER_02: And The Wizard of MGM, Memories of A.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_02: Arnold Gillespie by A.
• 1:46:33
  SPEAKER_02: Arnold Gillespie, is the memoirs published by uh Buddy Gillespie, who was the special effects man on The Wizard of Oz.
• 1:46:42
  SPEAKER_02: Really incredible read.
• 1:46:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's our show.
• 1:46:44
  unknown: Woo!
• 1:46:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you all so much for joining me on this incredible journey.
• 1:46:49
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I have.
• 1:46:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if you did, I hope you'll consider leaving me a review.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Five stars.
• 1:46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Put a sentence in there.
• 1:46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Matthew's so handsome.
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_02: And his recounts, the film was so enjoyable.
• 1:47:01
  SPEAKER_02: You'll love it.
• 1:47:02
  SPEAKER_02: It would help me out so much.
• 1:47:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I get to reach more people like you, and we build our own community here.
• 1:47:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we can all we can all have a little mimosas.
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I hope that you'll reach out to me, let me know what topics you'd like to see me cover in future episodes.
• 1:47:19
  SPEAKER_02: You can find me on social media.
• 1:47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram at the Matthew Marlowe.
• 1:47:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been a pleasure.
• 1:47:26
  SPEAKER_02: As always, I will see you all at the movies.