The Wizard of Oz

• 1. Introduction

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  The Wizard of Oz, a 1939 musical fantasy from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, holds a title few films can claim. According to the U.S. Library of Congress, it is the most seen film in cinematic history. A Kansas farm girl is swept away by a tornado to a land of witches, and audiences have followed her ever since. At the time it was finished, the picture was the most expensive production MGM had ever made. It was also a famously troubled shoot, with a rotating cast of writers, directors and even a Tin Man. What went wrong behind the camera, and what went right almost by accident? And how did a film that began as an expensive gamble turn into a steady source of quoted lines for generations of viewers?

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• 2. Rights and Rewrites

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  In January 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the rights to L. Frank Baum's novel from Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn had once pictured Eddie Cantor, an actor under contract to him, as the Scarecrow. The purchase followed Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of 1937, which proved that a beloved children's tale could succeed on screen. From there the script passed through at least ten screenwriters.

  On the 26th of February 1938, William H. Cannon, an assistant to producer Mervyn LeRoy, turned in a four-page outline. Recent fantasy films had fared badly, so he advised toning the magic down. His Scarecrow was a man so foolish that scaring crows was the only job open to him. His Tin Woodman was a criminal so heartless that he was sentenced to spend eternity inside a tin suit, which softened him. LeRoy and Arthur Freed rejected the idea.

  Writers came and went, often without knowing about one another, which was common practice then. Irving Brecher's treatment was turned down, and LeRoy sent him off to the Marx Brothers comedy At the Circus. Herman J. Mankiewicz delivered 17 pages of Kansas scenes on the 3rd of March 1938, and 56 more pages four days later. Noel Langley submitted a 43-page treatment on the 22nd of March, and poet Ogden Nash sent a four-page outline. A day after Langley's treatment arrived, Mankiewicz was taken off the project.

  On the 3rd of June 1938, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf were told to keep the story faithful to Baum's book. They added the Wizard as a Kansas figure called Professor Marvel. Freed disliked their work, and Langley replaced their dialogue with his own. When Victor Fleming became director, he brought in John Lee Mahin, who fully rewrote the opening scene. The final draft was finished on the 8th of October 1938.

  Only Langley, Ryerson and Woolf received screen credit. Uncredited hands included directors Richard Thorpe, George Cukor and King Vidor, along with Freed, Samuel Hoffenstein, Jack Mintz and Sid Silvers. Jack Haley and Bert Lahr wrote some of their own Kansas lines. Lyricist Yip Harburg may have done even more. His son and biographer, Ernie Harburg, said Yip wrote much of the dialogue and the song setups, and gave the film "a coherence and unity which made it a work of art."

  Langley believed a 1939 audience was too sophisticated for a straight fantasy, so Oz was reconceived as an elaborate dream. Freed also pushed for two characters Baum never wrote, a singing Princess of Oz and a Prince. They were meant for Betty Jaynes and Kenny Baker, and the roles were dropped. Garland and Jaynes did share a duet in Babes in Arms that same year. An unfilmed Kansas epilogue had the farmhand Hunk leaving for agricultural college and extracting a promise that Dorothy would write. A trace of that romance survives when Dorothy tells the Scarecrow, "I think I'll miss you most of all."

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• 3. Casting Reshuffles

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  Shirley Temple, the most prominent child star of the day, was reportedly among the actresses considered for Dorothy. So were Deanna Durbin, a newcomer with an operatic voice, and Judy Garland, the most experienced of the three. The official explanation for choosing Garland was contractual.

  Ray Bolger was first cast as the Tin Man, with Buddy Ebsen as the Scarecrow. Bolger wanted the Scarecrow badly. His childhood idol Fred Stone had played the part on stage in 1902, and that performance had inspired Bolger to become a vaudevillian. Reportedly he complained, "I'm not a tin performer; I'm fluid." Producer LeRoy agreed to swap them. Ebsen, a dancer, had been hired for the Scarecrow's wobbly walk, so he coached Bolger on it. Ebsen then recorded his songs and rehearsed as the Tin Man.

  The title role went through its own shuffle. Ed Wynn turned down the Wizard as too small a part. W. C. Fields was chosen next, but the studio could not meet his fee. Wallace Beery lobbied for it, yet MGM would not spare him for the long shoot. Contract player Frank Morgan was cast on the 22nd of September.

  Gale Sondergaard was first cast as the Wicked Witch of the West, when the character was meant to be sly and glamorous. Once the witch became the familiar ugly hag, she withdrew. She said later that she had no regrets. MGM contract player Margaret Hamilton replaced her on the 10th of October 1938, just two days before filming started.

  A talent search found more than a hundred dwarfs to play the Munchkins. That meant most of the Oz scenes had to be shot before Munchkinland could be filmed. Jerry Maren, one of the Munchkin actors, said each performer earned over $125 a week. Designer Adrian's department made over 100 costumes for those scenes. Each performer was photographed and cataloged in costume so the look could be repeated daily.

  The Wizard's shabby coat was chosen from a rack bought at a second-hand shop. One legend says Morgan found a label showing it had belonged to Baum, and Baum's widow confirmed this. Baum biographer Michael Patrick Hearn reports that the Baum family denied ever knowing about the coat. Hamilton thought the studio had made the story up.

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• 4. The Technicolor Ordeal

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  Ten days into shooting, Buddy Ebsen breathed in too much of the aluminum dust in his Tin Man makeup. One evening he took a breath and, in his words, "nothin' happened." He was hospitalized in critical condition and spent two weeks on oxygen before leaving the project. His daughter Kiki says the studio misrepresented his illness as an allergic reaction. No footage of Ebsen in costume has ever been released. His replacement, Jack Haley, assumed Ebsen had been fired. Haley's makeup was quietly changed to an aluminum paste over clown white greasepaint, though he still suffered an eye infection at one point.

  The studio then lost patience with director Richard Thorpe. LeRoy felt Thorpe was rushing the actors, and replaced him. George Cukor stepped in briefly as a creative advisor and shot nothing. He did change Garland's blonde wig and baby-doll makeup, and told her to "be herself." That meant redoing every scene she and Hamilton had completed. Cukor also suggested Haley, who was on loan from Fox. Victor Fleming took over on the 3rd of November 1938 and kept Cukor's direction. He left in turn to take over Gone with the Wind, and King Vidor directed the final ten days.

  The Oz scenes used three-strip Technicolor, which needed large, hot lights. The Kansas scenes and the credits were filmed in black and white and tinted sepia. MGM had been persuaded to use the process after its earlier Technicolor feature Sweethearts of 1938. Cast members arrived as early as 4 AM and often stayed until 7 PM, six days a week, from October 1938 to March 1939. Sets could heat past 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or 38 degrees Celsius. The electricity bill alone was estimated at $225,000.

  In Munchkinland, Hamilton's exit used a concealed elevator that dropped her below the stage as flames and smoke covered her escape. On the second take the fire burst too early and ignited her copper-based green face paint. She suffered third-degree burns to her hands and face and spent three months recovering. Because acetone had been used to remove the paint, makeup artist Jack Young switched to alcohol to guard against infection. When she returned, she refused to repeat a broomstick flight with a smoke mechanism. Stunt double Betty Danko did it instead and was badly injured when the mechanism malfunctioned.

  The stories about Garland are harder to read. In the decades since, credible accounts have emerged of extensive abuse before and during filming. The studio bound her chest and gave her Benzedrine tablets to keep her weight down. During the Cowardly Lion's introduction scene, Fleming slapped her when she could not stop laughing. She also wore false teeth and rubber discs in her nostrils. She kept doing so for another five years, until makeup artist Dorothy Ponedel put them in a drawer during Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944.

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• 5. Illusions And Costumes

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  Arnold Gillespie, the film's special effects director, built the tornado from 35 feet of muslin after a rubber version failed. He hung it from a steel gantry, attached the bottom to a rod, and moved both across the stage. Fuller's earth blown from compressed air hoses above and below completed the effect. Dorothy's house in the storm was a model. That tornado footage was reused in Cabin in the Sky in 1943, directed by Vincente Minnelli, and in High Barbaree in 1947.

  Makeup artist Jack Dawn made the Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow masks from foam latex, a technique few had tried. Peeling Bolger's glued-on mask took an hour each day. It eventually left permanent lines around his mouth and chin. The Tin Man's costume was leather-covered buckram, and the oil on his joints was chocolate syrup. The Lion costume used real lion skin and fur. Heavy makeup limited Lahr to soup and milkshakes, which made him ill until he demanded real meals.

  In the "horse of a different color" scene, Jell-O powder tinted the white horses. Asbestos made the witch's burning broomstick and the snow falling over Dorothy in the poppy field. After Hamilton was burned, she and Bolger received extra asbestos costumes for fire scenes. The art department spent almost a week choosing the shade of yellow for the brick road.

  The move from Kansas into color was meant to use hand-tinted stencil printing, frame by frame. That proved too costly and labor-intensive. Instead, during the May reshoots, the farmhouse interior was painted sepia. When Dorothy opens the door, it is her stand-in, Bobbie Koshay, in a sepia gingham dress. Once the camera passes through, Garland steps back into frame in bright blue gingham. The sepia door tints her briefly before she walks out into the Technicolor glare.

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• 6. Songs And Cuts

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  Harold Arlen composed the songs and Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics, and "Over the Rainbow" took the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It ranks first on the American Film Institute's list of 100 songs. Herbert Stothart won the Best Original Score award. All the songs were recorded before filming began, some while Ebsen was still in the cast. His voice remains in the group singing of "We're Off to See the Wizard."

  Vocal arranger Ken Darby needed unusual voices for the Munchkins. Speeding up recordings was not possible then, so he proposed recording at 60 feet per minute instead of the standard 90. Sound chief Douglas Shearer said it could not be done, so the studio built a new gear for the recorder. The King's Men quartet sang the Lollipop Guild part slowly, and playback raised it one-fourth higher in pitch. For the Winkies, Darby recorded faster than normal.

  Bolger's first version of "If I Only Had a Brain" was far more sedate. During filming, Cukor and LeRoy wanted something livelier, and it was rerecorded. The original was thought lost until a copy turned up in 2009.

  Test screenings began on the 5th of June 1939, and the film ran nearly two hours when the average picture ran about 90 minutes. LeRoy and Fleming knew they had to cut at least 15 minutes. Previews in San Bernardino, Pomona and San Luis Obispo guided them. Out went "The Jitterbug," the Scarecrow's Busby Berkeley dance after "If I Only Had a Brain," and reprises of "Over the Rainbow" and "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead." The Jitterbug film is lost, though silent 8mm home footage of rehearsals survives. A faint echo remains when the Witch says she has sent "a little insect on ahead." Garland's rainbow reprise in the Witch's castle was cut as too intense. Only the audio from Thorpe's earlier take endures.

  The main song nearly went too. MGM thought it stretched the Kansas scenes and sailed over children's heads. The studio also thought it undignified for Garland to sing in a barnyard. LeRoy, Freed and Fleming fought for it and won, and Garland made it her signature. The film was officially released in August 1939 at 101 minutes. The closing portion kept no songs, only dramatic underscoring that quoted music by Schumann, Mendelssohn and Mussorgsky.

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• 7. From Loss To Tradition

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  The Orpheum Theatre in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is credited with the film's premiere on the 10th of August 1939. The trade paper The Exhibitor disputed that, placing the debut a day earlier in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Hollywood saw it on the 15th of August at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. At Loew's Capitol Theatre in New York on the 17th of August, Garland and Mickey Rooney performed live after each screening. Garland extended her stay by two weeks, joined by Bolger and Lahr for the last one. The film opened nationwide on the 25th of August 1939.

  Reviews were mostly glowing. Frank Nugent of The New York Times called it a "delightful piece of wonder-working," though he thought the Munchkins still looked like Singer's Midgets in costume. Some viewers felt the 16-year-old Garland was too old for Baum's little girl. Russell Maloney of The New Yorker called it "a stinkeroo." Otis Ferguson of The New Republic said its fantasy "weighs like a pound of fruitcake soaking wet." Even so, it placed seventh in a Film Daily poll of 542 critics.

  Money was a harder problem. MGM's records show $2,048,000 earned in the U.S. and $969,000 abroad, a total of $3,017,000. Against a $2.7 million budget plus marketing and distribution, the studio lost $1,145,000. The film broke even only after its 1949 re-release brought in another $1.5 million. Later reissues varied the look. The 1949 version used sepia, while the 1955 one showed Kansas in plain black and white. That practice continued on television and home video until the 50th anniversary VHS in 1989.

  Television changed the film's fortunes. CBS paid $225,000 per broadcast, and the first showing came on the 3rd of November 1956 as the last installment of the Ford Star Jubilee. It earned a Nielsen rating of 33.9 and a 53% share. A repeat on the 13th of December 1959 did better, with a 36.5 rating and a 58% share. After that it became an annual tradition. On Christmas Day 1975, BBC1 aired it for an estimated 20 million UK viewers. Videocassettes followed on the 25th of October 1980.

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• 8. Afterlife Of Oz

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  On the 28th of August 2025, a 75-minute version opened at Sphere in the Las Vegas Valley. Google AI upscaled the picture for the venue's 16K screen and generated imagery beyond the original frame edges, about 1.2 petabytes of data in all. Wind, fog, haptics and scents accompanied the screenings, and an 80-piece orchestra under David Newman re-recorded the score on the original scoring stage. Reception was mixed.

  Honors had arrived long before. At the ceremony on the 29th of February 1940, the film won Best Original Song and Best Original Score, and Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award. In 1989 it was among the first 25 films preserved in the National Film Registry. UNESCO's Memory of the World register lists it, and Variety ranked it second on its 2022 list of the greatest movies. A 2018 University of Turin study of 47,000 films named it the most influential ever. In November 2024 it became the oldest film in Letterboxd's One Million Watched Club, until Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs joined in March 2025.

  Writers took it personally. Salman Rushdie wrote that the film "was my very first literary influence," and his first short story, written at age 10, was titled "Over the Rainbow." David Lynch named it his favorite film, and the 2022 documentary Lynch/Oz explores his references to it. Roger Ebert said it endures because its story reaches the deepest insecurities of childhood and then reassures them.

  Retellings followed. Journey Back to Oz, a 1972 animated sequel, featured Liza Minnelli, Garland's daughter. The Wiz opened in Baltimore in 1974 and won seven Tony Awards after reaching Broadway in 1975. A 1975 comic adaptation was the first co-production of DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Disney's Return to Oz in 1985 starred Fairuza Balk in her film debut, flopped at first, and later became a cult favorite. Wicked premiered on Broadway in 2003 and became the second highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time. Jon M. Chu's two-part film adaptation arrived on the 22nd of November 2024 and the 21st of November 2025.

  The story is still being reworked. In January 2024, writer-director Kenya Barris said he had finished a script for a modern remake. He noted that the original took place during the Great Depression and was about self-reliance.

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