Nine days into filming The Wizard of Oz in 1938, the actor cast as the Tin Man was lying in an oxygen tent. Buddy Ebsen — decades later famous as Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies — had been made up daily with pure aluminium dust powdered onto his face, and it had coated the inside of his lungs. He was hospitalised, struggling to breathe, and MGM's response was less than tender: the studio recast the part. Jack Haley took over, with the aluminium now mixed into a paste rather than a powder, and was never told exactly why his predecessor had vanished. Ebsen's recorded vocals survive in the soundtrack's group numbers — a ghost of the Tin Man who nearly died of his costume.
He was not the only casualty on what has a fair claim to being Hollywood's most hazardous beloved family film. Margaret Hamilton, the former kindergarten teacher playing the Wicked Witch of the West, suffered serious burns to her face and hand when a trapdoor exit from Munchkinland misfired and the flames rose before she had dropped — made worse because her green make-up was copper-based and had to be scrubbed off the burned skin. She spent weeks recuperating, returned only after refusing further fire work, and her stunt double Betty Danko was later injured in an exploding-broomstick gag. The gentle snowfall that wakes Dorothy in the poppy field was chrysotile asbestos, a standard film snow of the era. The Cowardly Lion's suit, worn by Bert Lahr under studio lights, was made from real lion skins and reportedly weighed dozens of pounds. And Terry, the female cairn terrier playing Toto, was put out of action for days after a guard's boot came down on her paw — while earning a widely cited $125 a week, more than many of the 120-plus performers playing Munchkins.
Four directors and a rainbow
The film's authorship was nearly as chaotic as its set. Richard Thorpe shot for about two weeks before being fired, his footage scrapped — it was under Thorpe that Judy Garland wore a blonde wig and doll-like make-up, both abandoned on the advice of George Cukor, who passed through as an uncredited script-and-look doctor. Victor Fleming directed the bulk of the picture and took the credit, then left before completion to rescue another troubled epic, Gone with the Wind. King Vidor quietly finished the job, shooting the sepia Kansas scenes — including "Over the Rainbow", which MGM executives argued for cutting after previews because it slowed the opening. The song stayed, won the Academy Award, and became Garland's signature for the rest of her life. She was sixteen, paid less than her adult co-stars, and won a special juvenile Oscar the following year.
The famous ruby slippers, meanwhile, are a Technicolor invention: in L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel the shoes are silver, changed by screenwriter Noel Langley because red sequins photographed better against a yellow brick road. Several pairs were made; one was stolen from a Minnesota museum in 2005 and recovered by the FBI in 2018.
The coat that came home (maybe)
The production's most magical story concerns Frank Morgan's costume. Playing the Kansas huckster Professor Marvel, Morgan needed a shabby-genteel frock coat, and the wardrobe department reportedly bought a rack of second-hand coats from a Los Angeles dealer. In the pocket lining of the one chosen, so the studio publicity ran, was the name of its original owner: L. Frank Baum, the author of Oz himself, and the coat was said to have been verified by his widow and tailor. Film historians have long been sceptical — the tale surfaced through MGM's publicity machine, which had every incentive to invent it — so the honest answer is the quizmaster's favourite: the myth says the coat was Baum's; the record says nobody can prove it.
For all the mayhem, the curse never touched the screen. The film lost money on first release in 1939 — it was expensive, and its audience skewed to half-price children's tickets — and won only two competitive Oscars, for song and score, in the year of Gone with the Wind. Salvation came through television: annual network broadcasts from the mid-1950s onwards made it a ritual for generations of American families, and by the time the Library of Congress selected the first films for the National Film Registry in 1989, Oz was among them. The horses of a different colour faded, the asbestos snow settled, and what survived was the one thing MGM nearly cut — a sixteen-year-old on a sepia farm, singing about the other side of the rainbow.
Quiz nuggets
- Buddy Ebsen, the original Tin Man, was hospitalised by inhaled aluminium make-up dust and replaced by Jack Haley, who wore an aluminium paste instead.
- Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch, was badly burned when a Munchkinland trapdoor's flames rose early; her copper-based green make-up worsened the injury.
- The snow in the poppy-field scene was chrysotile asbestos.
- Victor Fleming took the directing credit but left to take over Gone with the Wind; King Vidor shot the Kansas scenes, including "Over the Rainbow".
- Dorothy's slippers are silver in L. Frank Baum's novel — MGM made them ruby because red photographed better in Technicolor.