What I didn't know about The Wizard of Oz.

For the scenes where the Emerald City shines in the distance, it was drawn on a large piece of cardboard and filmed separately, with lights shining through holes.

· In the Horse of a Different Color scene, the horses were coated with different flavors of Jell-O mix and the horses kept trying to lick off the powder.

· In the early 1900s when L. Frank Baum wrote the book, American girls weren’t usually the heroes of books, but he believed girls could be just as strong as boys.

· In the book Dorothy’s magical slippers are silver, but the movie’s producers changed them to ruby so they’d shine out in color.

· The first musical version of the book was on Broadway in 1903, but entirely new music was composed for the movie. “Over the Rainbow” was almost cut from the movie because studio executives thought it slowed down the story.

· Margaret Hamilton (Wicked Witch of the West) caught on fire in the scene where she disappears from Munchkin Land, she recovered and returned to filming 6 weeks later.

· Prosthetics that makeup artists created to turn actors into flying monkeys were so well done, the same process was used 30 years later for Planet of the Apes. The “monkeys” had battery packs in their wings to make them flap…and there were only 12 actors playing monkeys, all the rest were miniature rubber puppets.

· The tornado was made with a 35-foot-long fabric stocking hanging from the top of a soundstage. A tiny motorized car was attached to the bottom of the stocking and was moved around to make the tornado look like it was sweeping across the prairie.
 

Here's another fact you might not have known... Buddy Ebsen, famous for his roles as Uncle Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies & Barnaby Jones, was originally cast to play the Tin Man, but he had an allergic reaction to the silver makeup they used, so he wasn't able to accept the role.

On a side note, Ebsen spent his later childhood, teen & early adult years here in Orlando. Went to the former Orlando High School & lived on a corner that I used to live up the block from & that a friend of mine lived right across the street from. It used to be a dance studio that dated back to when his parents, the original owners, were dance instructors.

It's still there, but it has been gutted & remodeled into condos.
 
He was a hoofer as well as a great actor. His sister, Vilma was a client of mine in Pacific Palisades.
 

I took some pics of the house as it was in the process of being gutted. The siding that had been put on a few decades earlier had been removed & you could see the outline of the letters "Ebsen Dance School" that had been nailed to the side next to the walkway. I took a close up of that too. Got it in my box of old pics somewhere.

This is the house as it looks now...

ebsenhouse.jpg


The part on the left side of the walkway was the house & the part on the right side was the dance studio.

Used to be all white with black trim.

Other changes were made, too.

The work bench in my garage is made from 2 x 4's taken out of the interior of the house... ;)
 
Nice bit of history, MrJim. ;)

Three more trivia points on Oz ...

The green make-up used for the Wicked Witch was copper-based and quite toxic, so much so that when she was burned they had to painfully remove it with alcohol. Her skin retained a green tint for weeks afterward.

There is an urban legend that, during one scene when the four stars are dancing along the Yellow Brick Road, if you look into the background you can see someone hanging from a tree, supposedly an on-set suicide. It was later proven to be false.

The Pink Floyd Connection - if you start Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album during Leo the Lion's last roar (the very beginning of the movie), the lyrics will sync up with the actions on screen dozens of times.

Yes, I tried it and yes, it did. ;)
 
My wife spent some time in Hollywood as an "extra" in movies and a few commercials. She was in the movie Air Force One and we picked her out sitting at a table during the Banquet Dinner when Harrison Ford (President) was speaking at the podium. Also caught a look at her, and her girlfriend, as Harrison Ford was leaving the Banquet Dinner. Anyway, she told me about how a number of things are created in movies. I like watching AMC movies w/Story Notes. Amazing what a person can learn about the movie that being shown.
 


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