The Wizard of Oz Victor Fleming

Development

Production on the film began when Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) showed that films adapted from popular children's stories and fairytales could be successful.[18][19] In January 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the rights to L. Frank Baum's popular novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn had considered making the film as a vehicle for Eddie Cantor, who was under contract to Samuel Goldwyn Productions and whom Goldwyn wanted to cast as the Scarecrow.[19]

The script went through several writers and revisions.[20] Mervyn LeRoy's assistant, William H. Cannon, had submitted a brief four-page outline.[20] Because recent fantasy films had not fared well, he recommended toning down or removing the magical elements. In his outline, the Scarecrow was a man so stupid that the only employment open to him was scaring crows from cornfields, and the Tin Woodman was a criminal so heartless that he was sentenced to be placed in a tin suit for eternity. This torture softened him into somebody gentler and kinder.[20] Cannon's vision was similar to Larry Semon's 1925 film adaptation, in which the magical elements are absent.

Afterward, LeRoy hired screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who delivered a 17-page draft of the Kansas scenes. A few weeks later, Mankiewicz delivered a further 56 pages. LeRoy also hired Noel Langley and poet Ogden Nash to write separate versions of the story. None of these three knew about the others, and this was not an uncommon procedure. Nash delivered a four-page outline; Langley turned in a 43-page treatment and a full film script. Langley then turned in three more scripts, this time incorporating the songs written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf submitted a script and were brought on board to touch up the writing. They were asked to ensure that the story stayed true to Baum's book. However, producer Arthur Freed was unhappy with their work and reassigned it to Langley.[21] During filming, Victor Fleming and John Lee Mahin revised the script further, adding and cutting some scenes. Haley and Lahr are also known to have written some of their dialogue for the Kansas sequence.

They completed the final draft of the script on October 8, 1938, following numerous rewrites.[22] Others who contributed to the adaptation without credit include Irving Brecher, Herbert Fields, Arthur Freed, Yip Harburg, Samuel Hoffenstein, Jack Mintz, Sid Silvers, Richard Thorpe, George Cukor and King Vidor. Only Langley, Ryerson, and Woolf were credited for the script.[19]

In addition, songwriter Harburg's son (and biographer) Ernie Harburg reported:

So anyhow, Yip also wrote all the dialogue in that time and the setup to the songs and he also wrote the part where they give out the heart, the brains, and the nerve, because he was the final script editor. And he – there was eleven screenwriters on that – and he pulled the whole thing together, wrote his own lines and gave the thing a coherence and unity which made it a work of art. But he doesn't get credit for that. He gets lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, you see. But nevertheless, he put his influence on the thing.[23]

The original producers thought that a 1939 audience was too sophisticated to accept Oz as a straight-ahead fantasy; therefore, it was reconceived as a lengthy, elaborate dream sequence. Because they perceived a need to attract a youthful audience by appealing to modern fads and styles, the score had featured a song called "The Jitterbug", and the script had featured a scene with a series of musical contests. A spoiled, selfish princess in Oz had outlawed all forms of music except classical music and operetta. The princess challenged Dorothy to a singing contest, in which Dorothy's swing style enchanted listeners and won the grand prize. This part was initially written for Betty Jaynes,[24] but was later dropped.

Another scene, which was removed before final script approval and never filmed, was an epilogue scene in Kansas after Dorothy's return. Hunk (the Kansan counterpart to the Scarecrow) is leaving for an agricultural college, and extracts a promise from Dorothy to write to him. The scene implies that romance will eventually develop between the two, which also may have been intended as an explanation for Dorothy's partiality for the Scarecrow over her other two companions. This plot idea was never totally dropped, and is especially noticeable in the final script when Dorothy, just before she is to leave Oz, tells the Scarecrow, "I think I'll miss you most of all."[25]

Much attention was given to the use of color in the production, with the MGM production crew favoring some hues over others. It took the studio's art department almost a week to settle on the shade of yellow used for the Yellow Brick Road.[26]

Casting

Several actresses were reportedly considered for the part of Dorothy, including Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox, at the time, the most prominent child star; Deanna Durbin, a relative newcomer, with a recognised operatic voice; and Judy Garland, the most experienced of the three. Officially, the decision to cast Garland was attributed to contractual issues.

Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Man and Buddy Ebsen was to play the Scarecrow.[22] Bolger, however, longed to play the Scarecrow, as his childhood idol Fred Stone had done on stage in 1902; with that very performance, Stone had inspired him to become a vaudevillian in the first place. Now unhappy with his role as the Tin Man (reportedly claiming, "I'm not a tin performer; I'm fluid"), Bolger convinced producer Mervyn LeRoy to recast him in the part he so desired.[27] Ebsen did not object; after going over the basics of the Scarecrow's distinctive gait with Bolger (as a professional dancer, Ebsen had been cast because the studio was confident he would be up to the task of replicating the famous "wobbly-walk" of Stone's Scarecrow), he recorded all of his songs, went through all the rehearsals as the Tin Man and began filming with the rest of the cast.[28]

W. C. Fields was originally chosen for the title role of the Wizard (after Ed Wynn turned it down, considering the part "too small"), but the studio couldn't meet Fields' fee.[29] Wallace Beery lobbied for the role, but the studio refused to spare him during the long shooting schedule. Instead, another contract player, Frank Morgan, was cast on September 22.

Veteran vaudeville performer Pat Walshe was best known for his performance as various monkeys in many theater productions and circus shows. He was cast as Nikko, the head Winged Monkey, on September 28, traveling to MGM studios on October 3.

An extensive talent search produced over a hundred little people to play Munchkins; this meant that most of the film's Oz sequences would have to be shot before work on the Munchkinland sequence could begin. According to Munchkin actor Jerry Maren, the little people were each paid over $125 a week (equivalent to $2,700 today). Meinhardt Raabe, who played the coroner, revealed in the 1990 documentary The Making of the Wizard of Oz that the MGM costume and wardrobe department, under the direction of designer Adrian, had to design over 100 costumes for the Munchkin sequences. They photographed and cataloged each Munchkin in their costume so they could consistently apply the same costume and makeup each day of production.

Gale Sondergaard was originally cast as the Wicked Witch of the West, but withdrew from the role when the witch's persona shifted from sly and glamorous (thought to emulate the Evil Queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) to the familiar "ugly hag".[30] She was replaced on October 10, 1938, just three days before filming started, by MGM contract player Margaret Hamilton. Sondergaard said in an interview for a bonus feature on the DVD that she had no regrets about turning down the part. Sondergaard would go on to play a glamorous feline villainess in Fox's version of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird in 1940.[31] Hamilton played a role remarkably similar to the Wicked Witch in the Judy Garland film Babes in Arms (1939).

According to Aljean Harmetz, the "gone-to-seed" coat worn by Morgan as the Wizard was selected from a rack of coats purchased from a second-hand shop. According to legend, Morgan later discovered a label in the coat indicating it had once belonged to Baum, that Baum's widow confirmed this, and that the coat was eventually presented to her. But Baum biographer Michael Patrick Hearn says the Baum family denies ever seeing the coat or knowing of the story; Hamilton considered it a rumor concocted by the studio.[32]

Filming

Ebsen replaced by Haley

The production faced the challenge of creating the Tin Man's costume. Several tests were done to find the right makeup and clothes for Ebsen.[33] Ten days into the shoot, Ebsen suffered a toxic reaction after repeatedly inhaling the aluminum dust (which his daughter, Kiki Ebsen, has said the studio misrepresented as an "allergic reaction") in the aluminum powder makeup he wore, though he did recall taking a breath one night without suffering any immediate effects. He was hospitalized in critical condition and was subsequently forced to leave the project. In a later interview (included on the 2005 DVD release of The Wizard of Oz), he recalled that the studio heads appreciated the seriousness of his illness only after he was hospitalized. Filming halted while a replacement for him was sought.

No footage of Ebsen as the Tin Man has ever been released – only photos taken during filming and makeup tests. His replacement, Jack Haley, assumed Ebsen had been fired.[34] The makeup used for Haley was quietly changed to an aluminum paste, with a layer of clown white greasepaint underneath, in order to protect his skin. Although it did not have the same dire effect on Haley, he did at one point suffer an eye infection from it. To keep down on production costs, Haley only rerecorded "If I Only Had a Heart" and solo lines during "If I Only Had the Nerve" and the scrapped song "The Jitterbug"; as such, Ebsen's voice can still be heard in the remaining songs featuring the Tin Man in group vocals.

George Cukor's brief stint

LeRoy, after reviewing the footage and feeling Thorpe was rushing the production, adversely affecting the actors' performances, had Thorpe replaced. During reorganization on the production, George Cukor temporarily took over under LeRoy's guidance. Initially, the studio had made Garland wear a blonde wig and heavy "baby-doll" makeup, and she played Dorothy in an exaggerated fashion. Cukor changed Garland's and Hamilton's makeup and costumes, and told Garland to "be herself". This meant that all the scenes Garland and Hamilton had already completed had to be reshot. Cukor also suggested the studio cast Jack Haley, on loan from Fox, as the Tin Man.[35]

Victor Fleming, the main director

Cukor did not shoot any scenes for the film, but acted merely as a creative advisor to the troubled production. His prior commitment to direct Gone with the Wind required him to leave on November 3, 1938, when Victor Fleming assumed directorial responsibility. As director, Fleming chose not to shift the film from Cukor's creative realignment, as producer LeRoy had already expressed his satisfaction with the film's new course.

Production on the bulk of the Technicolor sequences was a long and exhausting process that ran for over six months, from October 1938 to March 1939. Most of the cast worked six days a week and had to arrive as early as 4 a.m. to be fitted with makeup and costumes, and often did not leave until 7 pm or later. Cumbersome makeup and costumes were made even more uncomfortable by the daylight-bright lighting the early Technicolor process required, which could heat the set to over 100 °F (38 °C). Bolger later said that the frightening nature of the costumes prevented most of the Oz principals from eating in the studio commissary;[36] and the toxicity of Hamilton's copper-based makeup forced her to eat a liquid diet on shoot days.[37] It took as many as twelve takes to have Toto run alongside the actors as they skipped down the Yellow Brick Road.

All the Oz sequences were filmed in three-strip Technicolor[19][20] while the opening and closing credits, and the Kansas sequences, were filmed in black and white and colored in a sepia-tone process.[19] Sepia-tone film was also used in the scene where Aunt Em appears in the Wicked Witch's crystal ball. The film was not the first to use Technicolor, which was introduced in The Gulf Between (1917) as a two-color additive process, nor the first to use the three-color subtractive Technicolor Process 4, which made its live-action debut during a sequence in The Cat and the Fiddle (1934).[38]

In Hamilton's exit from Munchkinland, a concealed elevator was installed to lower her below stage level, as fire and smoke erupted to dramatize and conceal her exit. The first take ran well, but on the second take, the burst of fire came too soon. The flames set fire to her green, copper-based face paint, causing third-degree burns to her hands and face. She spent three months recuperating before returning to work.[39] Her green makeup had usually been removed with acetone due to its toxic copper content. Because of Hamilton's burns, makeup artist Jack Young removed the makeup with alcohol to prevent infection.[40]

King Vidor's finishing work as director

On February 12, 1939, Fleming hastily replaced Cukor in directing Gone with the Wind. The next day, the studio assigned Fleming's friend, King Vidor, to finish directing The Wizard of Oz (mainly the early sepia-toned Kansas sequences, including Garland's singing of "Over the Rainbow" and the tornado). Although the film was a hit on its release, Vidor chose not to take public credit for his contribution until Fleming died in 1949.

On-set treatment and abuse allegations

Since the film has been released, credible stories have come out indicating that Judy Garland endured extensive abuse during and before filming from various parties involved.[41][42][43] The studio went to extreme lengths to change her appearance including binding her chest and giving her Benzedrine tablets to keep her weight down, along with uppers and downers that caused giggling fits. There were claims that various members of the cast pointed out her breasts and made other lewd comments. The director Victor Fleming slapped her during the Cowardly Lion's introduction scene when Garland could not stop laughing at Lahr's performance. Once the scene was done, Fleming, reportedly ashamed of himself, ordered the crew to punch him in the face. Garland, however, kissed him instead.[44][45] She was also forced to wear a cap on her teeth to hide due to the fact some of her teeth were misaligned and also had to wear rubber discs on her nose to change its shape during filming.[46] Claims have been made in memoirs that the frequently drunk actors portraying the Munchkins propositioned and pinched her.[47][48][43][49] There were also allegations that she was groped by Louis B. Mayer.[41][50]