The Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th Anniversary Companion

by William Stillman

  Set design of the dairy-cow stalls by William “Willy” Pogany for the ice cream factory finale of Sam Goldwyn’s Kid Millions (1934). The Technicolor sequence was Goldwyn’s testing ground in preparation for a full-color, all-star The Wizard of Oz that was never produced. The film was slated to follow Kid Millions as the next in a cycle of Goldwyn-produced musical comedies starring Eddie Cantor.

  By February 18, 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the motion picture rights to The Wizard of Oz, outbidding Twentieth Century–Fox, which, the New York Times reported, had wanted the story specifically as a vehicle for their star Shirley Temple. Amid rumors and various newspaper editorials that the film should be done as an animated cartoon, executive producer Mervyn LeRoy announced that The Wizard of Oz would, in fact, be a live-action musical simulating a cartoon.

  A rare 1933 test of Mary Pickford as Alice in Wonderland could have doubled for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Sam Goldwyn’s proposed Technicolor version of the Frank Baum tale.

  PREPRODUCTION

  FROM PAGE TO SCREEN

  “THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF A LITTLE GIRL WHO FINDS HERSELF IN A MAGIC KINGDOM INHABITED BY LOVABLE LITTLE DWARFS. SHE MEETS MANY STRANGE CREATURES AND FINALLY COMES TO THE ABODE OF THE WIZARD OF OZ. A TRULY MODERN FAIRY TALE.”

  –M-G-M’S JUNE 4, 1938, SYNOPSIS OF THE WIZARD OF OZ

  MERVYN LEROY’S AMBITION to adapt The Wizard of Oz into a lavish, full-color musical was motivated by his fondness for the L. Frank Baum book and childhood memories of having seen the theatrical extravaganza. He recalled, “As a boy, I read and loved Baum’s books. That wasn’t unusual; children of my era and children of all the eras yet to come loved The Wizard of Oz and all the others. It had long been an idle dream of mine to take those fantastic, enchanting creatures and turn them into a movie. The dream remained a dream until I found myself at M-G-M.” All eyes were on LeRoy to create a picture that would not only replicate the popularity of the Baum book but would also rival the box-office success of Snow White. Everyone—Hollywood insiders, stockholders, columnists, and newspaper editors nationwide—had an opinion about The Wizard of Oz.

  “[A] lot of people have been writing to tell me what dire punishment is in store for all of us if we were to tamper with the story,” LeRoy confessed to the San Francisco Chronicle. But that is precisely what occurred as a series of writers tried their hand at translating Baum’s prose into a screenplay. Early drafts of the script were overwrought and clunky, and featured Auntie Em as a coldhearted woman who doesn’t believe in kissing children and Dorothy as longing for a prince. Other changes included having the characters dress up as members of “Smith’s Circus” when they, along with the Wizard of Oz, sneak into the Witch’s castle. In this version of the script, Dorothy wears the white tights and ruffled skirt of a bareback rider. The Tin Man is disguised as a mustached ringmaster and the Wizard of Oz plays the part of the circus strong man, complete with a leopard-skin costume. A July 25, 1938, version described the Wicked Witch’s obsession with Dorothy’s magic shoes as so great that she threatens to cut them off Dorothy’s feet. One proposed opening title sequence was imaginative, though unnecessarily complicated: a wizard’s shadow performed various sleight-of-hand tricks to make the picture credits magically appear and disappear. While the script underwent numerous revisions, LeRoy had his own conundrum: Toto. LeRoy was conflicted as to how Toto should be portrayed: should an actor play the part of Toto—in the style and manner of the Cowardly Lion—or would an actual canine suffice? LeRoy agonized over every aspect of the film.

  Striking a balance between admirers of the Baum books and regular movie patrons was a delicate prospect. LeRoy’s philosophy was that any treatment of the source matter should be handled with the awed wonderment of a child. Or, as LeRoy put it, “To make a picture like The Wizard of Oz everybody has to be a little drunk with imagination.” It was an approach LeRoy maintained in all his interviews about the film, and it guided the producer in his choice (and dismissal) of directors and scriptwriters.

  Screenwriter Noel Langley was one of more than a dozen individuals who had their hand in developing the film’s screenplay, but one of only three to receive credit. LeRoy tapped Langley for The Wizard of Oz after the writer showed the producer a copy of The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger (1937), a fairy tale he had written and illustrated. Chief among Langley’s editorial changes was to portray the fantasy portion of the story as Dorothy’s concussion-induced nightmare. In Baum’s tale, her adventures in the Land of Oz are true. In a February 1939 interview, Langley rationalized the narrative adjustment in terms of box-office insurance:

  The patronage of those who want to see an exact movie of the book wouldn’t pay for the picture. If one-third of the audiences knows the book, it’s a good percentage. And we have to please the other two-thirds who will expect an entertaining picture rather than a faithful reproduction. So we had to compromise by making the first part of the picture in the Kansas setting quite plausible and introducing characters in it that later appear in the Land of Oz sequences. . . . In the book, you remember, Dorothy goes to sleep during the cyclone and wakes in the Land of Oz. So making the fairy tale a dream sequence is consistent with the story.

  Langley’s position wasn’t as complacent after he saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time and realized the edits that had been made to his script. He wept bitterly and stated that he “loathed the picture” for completely missing the mark, in his opinion. During development of the script for The Wizard of Oz, Langley was prone to passionate arguments with his producers and even walked off the picture at one point.

  Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf were Langley’s screen-credited coauthors on The Wizard of Oz script. Older and wiser, they understood how to navigate the studio system and its inherent politics. Just prior to the film’s premiere, the screenwriting team was savvy enough to take out a full-page ad in Daily Variety that read: “Every moment we worked on the ‘Wizard’ with Mervyn LeRoy was a moment of joy.” (Eventually time mellowed both Noel Langley’s temperament and his perception of The Wizard of Oz. When he saw the picture again a decade later, he was more objective, saying, “Not a bad picture, you know.”)

  While the finished script was a fairly faithful rendition of the Baum book, the screenwriters did retain some artistic liberties. Several characters now had Kansas counterparts to their Land of Oz doppelgängers. The Emerald City took on a decidedly British atmosphere not reflected in Baum’s original. The sentry at the palace gates was described in one draft as wearing a slightly exaggerated copy of the uniform worn by the guards at Buckingham Palace; and the song “The Merry Old Land of Oz,” performed by a Cockney cabby, is a playful spin on the British phrase “Merrie Olde England.” But ultimately, The Wizard of Oz retained the most important characters and components from its originally published form. All creatures and subplots that were considered superfluous to preserving the humanistic element of Baum’s narrative were excised. This film was to be the most authentic attempt in preserving the essence of Baum’s original. But public opinion awaited—and the public could be fickle.

  WALT AND LEROY:

  FRATERNITY OF FANTASY

  “I HOPE THE GHOST OF L. FRANK BAUM GIVES SAMUEL GOLDWYN A GOOD HAUNTING FOR NOT SELLING THE RIGHTS TO THE WIZARD OF OZ BOOKS TO WALT DISNEY.”

  –HOLLYWOOD COLUMNIST PAUL HARRISON, MARCH 16, 1938

  MERVYN LEROY

  WHEN M-G-M ANNOUNCED that Mervyn LeRoy would produce The Wizard of Oz, it was widely considered a risky gamble to rival Walt Disney. But Disney was held in highest esteem by LeRoy, who in later years stated that Walt was one of only two geniuses he had ever met—M-G-M producer Irving Thalberg being the second. (LeRoy so admired Disney that he conceived the idea of giving Disney one Oscar® statuette plus seven smaller ones when he was honored for Snow White at the eleventh annual Academy Awards® in February 1939.) Historically, film fantasies were tenuous turf, with the exception of cartoon shorts. With so much at stake, the ambitious LeR
oy exercised due caution. Dissatisfied with a flurry of wildly meandering Wizard of Oz script drafts and rewrites from more than two months prior—all contributed by various screenwriters—the producer sought to revitalize his production team’s mind-set about the elements of successful fantasy. On May 10, 1938, LeRoy screened Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at M-G-M, the print on loan directly from Walt Disney himself at LeRoy’s request. Among the production staff undoubtedly in attendance were songwriters Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, who had begun their association with The Wizard of Oz just the day before.

  It was not uncharacteristic that LeRoy should have consulted Disney; the two held mutual regard for each other as industry colleagues active in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Socially, both Disney and LeRoy were avid Thoroughbred racing fans and, in 1938, each was an original shareholder of the new Hollywood Park racetrack. Professionally, a cooperative relationship between Disney and M-G-M had previously been established by Disney’s creating animated segments or allowing use of his characters for several M-G-M films, including Hollywood Party (1934), Babes in Toyland (1934), and The Women (1939).

  December 27, 1937: Walt Disney officially becomes a movie mogul with this cover for Time, which acknowledged Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’s critical and artistic triumph. Among his follow-up projects, Disney was eyeing the Frank Baum Wizard of Oz stories.

  THE WIZARD OF OZ FINDS DIRECTION

  “[THE WIZARD OF OZ] STORIES WERE THE FIRST CHILDREN’S STORIES OF THE FAIRY-TALE TYPE TO BREAK AWAY FROM THE CONVENTIONAL PRINCES AND PRINCESSES, OGRES, GIANTS, AND SO ON. . . . UNTIL BAUM CONCEIVED THE IDEA OF STREAMLINING THEM, THEY WERE CONSIDERED THE ONLY LITERARY FARE FOR YOUNGSTERS.”

  –VICTOR FLEMING

  ONCE THE SCRIPT was acceptable, production began in earnest, albeit in fits and starts. Norman Taurog, known for coaching child actors into stellar performances, was the first director announced in industry trade publications to “meg” The Wizard of Oz—“meg” being 1930s show-biz slang for the megaphone used by directors to give instructions on set. Before filming began in mid-October 1938, however, Taurog was replaced by Richard Thorpe, who had a reputation for bringing in pictures on schedule and within budget.

  Given that The Wizard of Oz was a costly project, it was advantageous that Thorpe was expedient. Within two weeks on the picture, he had filmed Dorothy’s introduction to the Scarecrow and all the events in and around the Wicked Witch’s castle. He had begun rehearsing scenes in the apple orchard leading to the discovery of the Tin Man when production was halted; LeRoy was dissatisfied with the raw footage and dismissed Thorpe. The directorial seat was next assumed by George Cukor.

  Norman Taurog and Judy Garland strike a “We’re Off to See the Wizard” pose when they reunited to film Little Nellie Kelly, September 23, 1940.

  Though not intended to helm The Wizard of Oz long-term, Cukor helped LeRoy troubleshoot and recommended revisions for the actors’ deliveries and, most significantly, their makeup designs. Within a matter of days, however, Cukor was recalled from his loan-out by David O. Selznick to continue preparations for directing Gone with the Wind. Victor Fleming was announced as next in the “pilot’s seat.”

  It has often been suggested that Fleming, the director of record for The Wizard of Oz, signed on to the project with paternal instinct as his motivation, attracted by the chance to create a cinematic valentine for his two young daughters. Indeed, Fleming possessed the childlike vision LeRoy valued, and has been quoted as saying, “[I]t is not difficult for adults to accept the [Wizard of Oz] story and enjoy it as much as children. For, as you know, we are all Peter Pans to some degree.” But it may also be argued that Fleming was equally spurred to accept the project in honor of L. Frank Baum—especially as Fleming and Baum had reportedly met on at least one occasion in Fleming’s youth.

  As sensational as it sounds, it is not improbable for the two men to have crossed paths: Baum lived in Hollywood from 1910 until his death in 1919. Fleming would have been in his twenties and the protégé of director Allan Dwan at the time that Baum was active with his Oz Film Manufacturing Company, 1913 to 1915. The story was planted among the prepared reviews, player biographies, and assorted anecdotes in The Wizard of Oz theatrical campaign book: “Fleming knew Baum years ago when the author lived in Hollywood,” and Fleming is quoted as saying, “I was a youngster then, intensely interested in the show business. Naturally when introduced to the author, my first remark was about his story and the stage show.” According to Fleming, Baum attributed The Wizard of Oz musical’s longevity to its inspired spark of originality. M-G-M’s account concluded that the encounter between author and aspiring director left an impression: “Throughout [Fleming’s] career he remembered [Baum’s] stories, but he never dreamed that he would one day be chosen to direct one.”

  GEORGE CUKOR

  Fleming may have seemed an odd choice to direct a fairy tale, the success of which depended largely on the performance of its child lead. Standing six-foot-one and ruggedly handsome with piercing gray eyes, Fleming was a formidable presence with a no-nonsense directing style and a penchant for manly outdoor activities after hours. But it should be remembered that he quite competently handled juvenile actors in M-G-M’s Treasure Island (1934) and Captains Courageous (1937). While making Test Pilot in 1938, Martin Spellman recalled that the director took a shine to him and generously arranged for Spellman to have a speaking line in a crowd scene in which he was a child extra. In early 1939, M-G-M announced that Fleming was to direct The Yearling, with its boy protagonist, Jody. When critic Wood Soanes reviewed The Wizard of Oz in 1939, he noted that Judy Garland’s effectiveness as Dorothy was “a tribute to the direction of Victor Fleming.”

  The Wizard of Oz commences production, October 13, 1938, as director Richard Thorpe, Terry the cairn terrier, and Judy Garland gather for the press. This is the only known photograph to show Thorpe on the film’s set. Thorpe was its second director, following Norman Taurog, but the first to begin shooting footage. Thorpe was dismissed after two weeks and reassigned to direct The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Thorpe is perhaps best known for directing Johnny Weissmuller through four Tarzan pictures and Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock.

  Mervyn LeRoy (far right) and Georgie Stoll (far left), associate conductor on The Wizard of Oz, pay a visit to Selznick International Pictures to consult with Victor Fleming about The Wizard of Oz on the set of Gone with the Wind. They are joined by actress Ona Munson in costume as Belle Watling.

  Fleming directed Garland and the remaining cast through the majority of the film’s production, including most of the Technicolor sequences (the only salvageable footage from Richard Thorpe’s tenure being a few fleeting shots of Toto escaping the Wicked Witch’s castle). During his time on The Wizard of Oz, Fleming was recalled as professional but not untenable; his impatience flared only occasionally. In January 1939, after the Munchkinland scenes had wrapped, Robert Kanter, who played a Munchkin soldier, said Fleming was a “darn swell chap.” Garland developed a schoolgirl crush on the director and, years later, referred to him as “a darling man.” She even threw Fleming a farewell party in February 1939 when he was reassigned to take over directorship of Gone with the Wind from George Cukor. (As the party ended, the crew turned on five huge fan machines to jokingly blow Fleming away “with the wind.”) The film’s remaining Kansas scenes and Technicolor retakes were subsequently overseen, without credit, by director King Vidor.

  KING VIDOR

  Though King Vidor supplanted Victor Fleming as director in February 1939, his M-G-M contract was not amended until March 8, 1939—the anniversary date of Vidor’s tenure with Metro. In addition to overseeing the Kansas scenes, Vidor also directed Technicolor retakes and minor additions to The Wizard of Oz, all of which went uncredited per Vidor’s amendment.

  IN ANY FILM production, casting the proper actor in each role is crucial. But as fate would have it, the majority of The Wizard of Oz cast was a second or third choice. It i
s a delicious irony that the actors would become indelibly associated with their screen personas. As is so often true of classic films, the cast and crew of The Wizard of Oz were blissfully unaware that they were creating something timeless. This has been echoed over the years in interviews not only with the principals but also with the extras and supporting cast members. While the actors would all find continued professional success outside of their participation in The Wizard of Oz, their roles in the film would be their enduring legacy.

  THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

  (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

  JUDY GARLAND

  is Dorothy Gale, the young Kansas farm girl who dreams of a place over the rainbow.

  TERRY THE CAIRN TERRIER

  is Toto, Dorothy’s dog and loyal companion.

  RAY BOLGER

  is Hunk Andrews in Kansas and the Scarecrow in the Land of Oz.

  JACK HALEY

  is Hickory Twicker in Kansas and the Tin Man in the Land of Oz.

  BERT LAHR

  is Zeke in Kansas and the Cowardly Lion in the Land of Oz.