WHAT WENT WRONG - The Wizard of Oz

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Toxic body paint, third degree burns and 80 cigarettes a day, oh my! This Chris & Lizzie cover the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz, a film that brought joy to so many and was a nightmare for most of its cast, especially 16-year-old Judy Garland.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to What Went Wrong. I am your host, Chris Winterauer, here with my co-host Lizzie Bassett. How are you doing tonight? I'm doing great. Well, I'm a little depressed after the research that I did for this episode, but other than that, good. You did text me telling me that this had made you cry more than once researching this film. It sure did, yeah. The movie's lovely to watch.

So I will just hand it over to you, Lizzie. What are we talking about this week? We are talking about the Wizard of Oz, which was a movie. suggestion made to us on Instagram by a listener named Tiffany so thank you Tiffany I guess although I don't know it really really bummed me out

that pandemic plus depressing research not a great combo also it's 400 degrees in our Los Angeles apartments right now so tears and sweat are just becoming a pool of gross yeah I'm really I'm just sort of slick with salt water of all different kinds right now

horrible so yes we are talking about the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz, today. Worldwide premiere was August 25th, 1939. It was directed by Victor Fleming, sort of. We will get into that later. A screenplay by, let's just say a million people. I'm not even going to tell you one, because there really wasn't just one. Based on the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. It starred Frank Morgan as the wizard, Ray Bulger as the scarecrow, Bert Larr is the cowardly lion, Jack Haley as the Tin Man, Margaret Hamilton is the Wicked Witch of the West, and of course, Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale. It was nominated for six

Oscars, including Best Picture, which had actually lost to Gone with the Wind, also sort of directed by Victor Fleming. He does about half and then hands it off to somebody else. It kind of blew my mind that this was the same year as Gone with the Wind, because I don't know if you've seen Gone with the wind recently. All the performances are very over the top. It feels very like sort of silent movie-esque still. This does not. Yeah, so this is what I wanted to talk about before we got in. to the terrible behind the scene stuff, which is that this movie feels so modern. Yes. It feels more modern than water world.

Yeah, 100%. Which we covered last week. I love technicolor. I love the color of this movie. I love the production design of this movie. Just all of the visuals. And the performances aren't too big. Like at the end, when Dorothy's crying because she doesn't want to say goodbye.

It's amazing. It's like a break your heart performance. Her performance across the board just. blew me away. And I will say this about Judy Garland. I had not seen this movie for probably 15 years, at least, maybe like 20. And I never really understood the cult of Judy Garland. My mom loved her. I knew that she was, you know, such a huge star and I just never quite got it. I understood that her voice was good. But watching this again as an adult, she blew me away. She was an unbelievably good actress. And that's what I think I did not realize.

She was wonderful. I thought the whole cast did a great job. When I saw that this was 1939, I was stunned. I for some reason thought it was 10 or 12 years later. There's actually a reason for that, which we will get to. That is when it entered the cultural consciousness, if you will. Here's what I should say at the top of this. The film holds up incredibly well. The special effects hold up incredibly well. That's really not what went wrong on this project. One thing I want to note right at the top is that the Wizard of Oz, more than maybe any other movie we have covered so far, was not a project of power. It was entirely created as a commercial endeavor.

Like, this thing was made to make money. There is no auteur behind this or a screenwriter with a drive to tell the story. This movie was about money, much to the detriment of its stars, particularly its young female star, Judy Garland. So let's dive in. MGM Greenlights the Wizard of Oz, mainly because of the success of 1937's biggest movie, which was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Two reasons.

that this gets them to Greenlight Wizard of Oz. One, it showed the potential commercial success of color film. That was actually one of the first major movies to use the most recent form, which was the Technicolor three strip process, I believe. And it looked beautiful. And this was the first time that studios started to look at the cost-benefit analysis of color and thought, you know what, this is great, we should actually spend the money on this. The other reason is that Snow White was a kid's story, which the Wizard of Oz was as well,

to a certain extent. And it showed them that these do have commercial success and that people will come out to see them. So they said, all right, here we go, Wizard of Oz. But Snow White was animated, right? Yes. Yeah, it's interesting. But it was still technicolor. Well, yeah, it's the same process of emulsion to get it on the film strip. Interesting. But prior to 1937, there were some color films, not a lot because it was so expensive and so difficult. And this three-strip process was relatively new prior to this year and keep in mind again, this is the same year as gone with the wind, which also was entirely in color. Also looks fantastic. Not as good as Wizzard Dawes, I will say, but it does look great. The novel was released in 1901. It was a critical and commercial success. It spawned a Broadway

musical in 1902. Interestingly, the music in the film is not the music from that show. There was one other silent film adaptation in 1925. We don't really need to talk about it. It sounds absolutely bizarre. Somehow the scarecrow is the lead and not Dorothy. So this becomes, a studio operation pretty quickly for MGM. And I want to take a minute to break down what the studio system was in 1938 when this was essentially being developed. The big five were the five major studios that ran Hollywood, which was MGM, Paramount, RKO, Warner Brothers, and Fox. The studio system, as we actually have discussed previously, and I think the Heaven's Gate episode, was literally just vertical integration. It should never have been legal.

for reasons that we will get into in this episode because of the control it gave them. But basically, the movie studio, they shot the movie on their own lot. They had it written by writers they had under long-term contracts, directed by directors they had under long-term contract. Then they'd screen them at theaters across the country that they also owned. And didn't they also had the actors under long-term contract as well? So you just had to act in whatever movies the studio wanted you to act in. Exactly.

You sign a contract with the studio. and basically they own you. They had complete control over every process of the filmmaking, and no one bore the brunt of that more than the actors that they had under these long-term contracts. Now, MGM in particular is interesting because they, as well as some other studios, but they in particular operated on the star system.

Basically, they made a habit of signing relative unknowns, and since they owned every part of the process, they would just put them through rigorous training and then churn out movie after movie after movie with these kids until they were stars. It's a very euphemistic term for what is effectively a grooming system that is incredibly grueling for young actors. Exactly.

So they immediately have several of their contract writers start drafting outlines without any of them realizing others were working on the same project. This was actually not an uncommon thing for them to do. Not that uncommon today. They still do bakeoffs where they will have multiple writers pitch pretty fleshed out takes. They're not supposed to. And the WGA is trying to prevent that. But they will have, you know, multiple writers pitch takes on a project and bring, you know,

them all in. And then they get to pick the best one. Yeah. I mean, that's what they're doing here. They end up hiring, I think, like three people to sort of start fleshing out larger chunks. They hire Herman J. Mankowitz to start writing drafts of the Kansas scenes. He would write his Academy Award winning screenplay for Citizen Kane two years later. They also hire South African screenwriter and playwright Noel Langley to start writing and poet Ogden Nash to

start writing his version. None of those three knew the other two had been hired. Long story short, they all turn in varying degrees of scripts with Langley arguably turning in the most with a full script. He turns in three more versions, adding songs from Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, who are the ones that wrote the songs in the movie. Two more people get hired to touch up the script. Victor Fleming also revised the script during filming Bert Lair and Jack Haley wrote some of their own dialogue in the Kansas scenes. All this is to say, it's impossible to credit one person with writing the Wizard of Right. This thing got gang banged into production. Yes. Three people do get the credit, which is, I believe, Langley, and then the two that did the rewrite.

Got it. Some have argued that Yip Harburg actually deserved the credit more than anyone else because he wrote all of the dialogue leading into the songs, which is most of the movie. Exactly. So I suspect that a lot of the credit probably should go to him and actually probably Victor Fleming, given how much they changed on set. The end result is not super close to what the script was. It involved a dream sequence featuring a spoiled princess of Oz versus Dorothy instead of a wicked witch, a song called The Jitterbug on the soundtrack, and an insinuated romantic relationship between Dorothy and the scarecrow character, whose name is Hunk, by the way, which is disgusting.

She does say that in the movie. I noticed. So let's get into the casting. Three actresses were reportedly closely considered for Dorothy. They were Shirley Temple. Oh, wow. At the time, any news. enormous star. She was 10.

Deanne Durbin, a Canadian actress who had actually already appeared alongside Judy Garland in every Sunday in 1936. She also looks a lot like Judy Garland. And then of course, Judy Garland. Now, Judy won the part because of her truly unbelievable voice

and also because Shirley Temple was evidently under contract at Fox and they refused to loan her to MGM. Judy was also already under contract at MGM and she was, let's say, a bargain by. Exactly. We could get Judy for $12. Let's do it. Literally. More on that in a little bit. However, MGM felt that they'd made something of a sacrifice in casting Judy over her more attractive competitors, particularly Shirley Temple. Also because Shirley Temple was 10 years old at the time, Judy Garland was 16. So that's a big age difference that they don't really let go of. And Judy Garland looked like a woman at that point in time.

Whereas Shirley Temple looked young for her age at 10. She had this perpetual childish look to her. And instead of just being okay with the fact that they had cast a womanly 16-year-old, they really don't let this go. And we will get to that in a minute. But first, let's talk Judy. So she's born Francis Gum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1922. She's born into a vaudeville family who quickly realized that they have a star on their hands

and had baby gum performing with her sisters as young as two and a half. years old. In 1934, they changed their name to the Garland sisters, and she adopts the name of Judy in place of baby. There's a bunch of different origin stories about how that happened. One is like they were at the world's fair and something. I don't know. Who knows how that happened. But she's Judy Garland as of 1934. And later on in her life, I'm paraphrasing, but she would say something like that she kind of talks about Francis Gum as like a different person. And when she talks about herself, she says that like Judy Garland was born when I was 12 years old. Like I was born when I was 12 years old. Yeah. So the family moved to Los Angeles. She was very close to her father.

Her father, there are a lot of rumors that they had to move around quite a bit because her father continued to have affairs with young men who worked at the theaters where they were showing and working, et cetera, et cetera. So they move around a lot. They do end up settling in Los Angeles and they begin auditioning around. One year later, Judy signed a contract with MGM. She was. was 13 years old. This same year, her father died suddenly of meningitis. This was a huge blow to Judy Garland. Like, she clearly really loved her father.

He was in her corner in a way that I don't think anyone else was for the rest of her life. It also left her with her overbearing mother. And by all accounts, Ethel Gum was not a party. Ethel Gum. Ethel Gum. Um, I'm just going to come right out and say it. It seemed like a real piece of shit. Sounds like a Nicorette knockoff brand.

She's bad. And Judy has said as much. Later on in her life, Judy Garland would refer to her mother as the real Wicked Witch of the West. So her mom happily agreed to MGM's terms and conditions that she signed at 13. And she just signed her kid over to the studio. She's just like, I'm going to cash in those checks and you're going to go to work.

Yes. No questions asked. This is a recording I want to play for you of Judy. At 14 years old, she's been under contract for a little less than a year in the movie Listen Darling from 1938, singing what would become one of her more famous songs. And remember when you're listening to this, that this is a 14-year-old. I still recall the thrill. I guess I always will.

I hope it will never depart. Wow. 14. Yeah. That's like in America's Got Talent kind of performance right there. It's insane. Yeah. I mean, the thing is that, like, I don't.

don't think you develop that vocal strength unless you're being forced to do this like 40 times a day from when you're two and a half years old. Like she she had been doing it for 12 years at this point. So she starts booking roles alongside Mickey Rooney in his series of Andy Hardy films. They were reportedly good friends for most of their lives actually. And the movies were a pretty decent success. The studio's grip on Judy was tightening prior to Oz with mounting pressure her to lose weight. So I had actually always assumed that her problems had started on the Wizard of Oz, but it turns out that the studio had pretty much since the onset of her contract began, so 13 years old, been forcing Judy to take pet pills, uppers, which were reportedly a drug

called Dexodrin, to stay awake for sometimes two to three days at a time. Jesus. And then downers to be able to sleep for a few hours before they'd wake her back up again for another shift. Oh, my God. And so that's like the equivalent of, you know, the 50s diet pills as well. It's just like speed, basically, that they're giving it. It's speed.

That's exactly what it is. These were the 50s diet pills. Several reports also actually say that her mother was the first person to give her these pills at 10 years old. That was a bit harder to verify. Some side effects of dexedrine include agitation, aggression, mood swings, depression, hallucinations, abnormal thoughts, and behavior, thoughts of suicide. In addition to the usual diarrhea, headache, sweating, and irritability.

And a regular heartbeat as well, I think. Sounds. like a real fun combo. So think up of the contract players in the studio system, almost like salaried workers versus people who are getting hourly pay, right? The studio is paying them whether they're working or not. They're paying them whether they're in a movie or not in order to have exclusive rights to them. And as far as the studio is concerned,

that means they want to squeeze as much work out of them as they possibly could. So that's why they would routinely not give these kids a break in between movies. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland had said that sometimes they would start shooting a new movie within hours of wrapping the last one. Like they gave them three hours off and they would start them again. It's so abusive. It's mind-boggling in retrospect.

And they're minors on top of all of it. They're minors, their parents, no. Like your kid's not coming home for four days at a time. You know. Yeah, but the issue is that at this point in the United States we're still in the Great Depression and that your child is making more money then I'm sure the parents are able to make themselves.

100%. I still don't think that's an excuse for doing what allowing us to be done to your kid. But also, this was a time when child labor was accepted. That is true. There were no child labor laws at this point in time that they were dealing with. I understand wanting to have them work. I don't understand, like allowing them to be drugged and kept up for four days at a time. I'm not trying to justify any of it.

It's all awful. I'm saying the problems were persistent. did beyond just Hollywood. There were children working across the United States at this point in time. So as we touched on before, there was also quite a bit of concern about the fact that although she was 16 years old at the time of filming, Judy Garland had boobs. She had a, she had a womanly figure. Like she was shapely. So they wanted her to look like more of a little girl since they were still stuck on the fact that they couldn't get Shirley Temple. So they put her on a diet, a daily diet, mind you, of black coffee, 80 cigarettes, and chicken soup.

Okay. So for those of you that are fans of the Breakfast Club, that is the John Bender family Christmas diet. That's absolutely, is that so sorry, 80, I read a daily diet including 80 cigarettes. Is she supposed to eat the cigarettes? I'm not kidding. I found this is more than one. I don't know.

Oh, my God. A daily diet, black coffee, chicken soup, and 80 or so cigarettes a day. Okay. They also had the costume department. meant tape down her breasts in a way that was extremely uncomfortable. Also, not to get too graphic, but when your boobs are growing, they hurt more than anything else. So the idea of having them strapped down would be a nightmare.

They put her in a special corset that was also designed to make her look more prepubescent. And the reason her braids are always kind of hanging over her chest was also to cover it. More horrible things they did to Judy. She had prosthetics inserted to the inside of her nose, because they didn't like the shape of her nose and they were called nose discs. What? And they would actually change the shape of it

from the inside. To top all this off, they had a problem with her freaking teeth. They said she had a snagletooth. Again, she's 16. Like, she's going to have a snagletooth. They glued rudimentary caps onto her teeth that would perpetually

keep falling off during filming. So it's a miracle she could even talk on this movie, let alone be able to sing as well as she was singing. Oh, God. So now we're going to get into the trigger warning area for anybody who wants to dip out. Please feel free. It's really just downhill from here. So Louis B. Mayor of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM, was known to call her My Little Hunchback because of her height. That is how he referred to her. He also had a habit of reportedly calling her into his office. And then he would place his hand on her left breast and demand that she sing from the heart. That's the only place to be. to sing from. Again, she's 16 years old. Oh, my God. He would continue to do this specific grope to her until she was an adult.

And she finally told him to stop. When she did that, he evidently started crying and said, how can you say that to me? To me, who loves you? Terrifying. So she's basically living in fear all day, every day. It was really hard for her to ever even get a hold of real meals. Sometimes her only chance to sneak a meal was while being interviewed by reporters in the MGM commissary.

And she felt like everybody was watching her. She had to choose what she was eating. Sometimes she would try to order more and see if she could get it. And then sometimes the reporters would write things about her like being a hog and eating everything in the kitchen. It reached a point where MGM actually had a designated Judy Garland waitress in the commissary who no matter what Judy ordered, they would only ever bring her a really thin chicken soup. So she has zero control over her life at this point. Like none.

Right. In the book The Road to Oz, the Evolution, Creation and Legacy of a Motion Picture masterpiece, Judy was quoted as saying, quote, I want to grow up to be very beautiful too, only I probably won't, but I do try. Yeah. They broke Judy Garland. Yeah, clearly. At 16.

Yeah. Like this is... If not earlier, I mean, leading into it. Yeah, there was no coming back from this. So let's get to the rest of the cast. Ray Bulger was originally cast as the Tin Man, but begged to play the scarecrow and God wish, leaving another actor named Buddy Ebson to play the Tin Man. Now, you may recall that Buddy Ebson is not who I listed as the tin man at the top of this, and there is a reason for that.

Bert Larr rounded out the cast as the cowardly lion, Frank Morgan, another contract player as the wizard, and an actress named Gail Sondergaard as the witch. Now, Gail was under the impression that the witch was a hot witch, like the one in Snow White, because she had been in previous drafts of the script. But as we've mentioned, the script is undergoing basically constant changes. And when it came time to shoot, and Gail found out that she was going to be less like Angelina Jolie's maleficent and more Carol Kane and the princess bride, she, she quit. She was like, I'm not doing this. Got it. It's Hot Witch or bust? It's Hot Witch or bust, and that Hot Witch blew that Popsicle stand three days before filming began. Oh, wow.

In Steps, Margaret Hamilton. who's going to be a bit of a hero for us in this story. She was a character actress and former kindergarten teacher who had been steadily working since the early 30s. By the way, despite what she looks like in this movie, she's 36. She's actually not super old. She's significantly...

She doesn't look that old in this movie. Yeah, she's not. She's like 20 years younger than Glinda, by the way. Well, Glinda just looks great. Glinda, whatever cream she's using, keep using it, Glenda. Margaret Hamilton was a bit of a badass. One thing she was known for is she actually refused

to ever sign a contract with a single studio. She insisted on remaining freelance no matter what, because she did not want the kind of control that they exert over contract players. She set her own salary at $1,000 a week so it was not to price herself out of work, but she also demanded at least six weeks of pay for the Wizard of Oz, and she got it. Good for Margaret. Yeah, get it, Margaret. So let's listen to Margaret talking about accepting the role of the Wickey Witch of the West last minute. He said, they're sort of interested in you for a part in the Wizard of Oz

and I said oh gosh think of that I said I love that story from the time I was four years old what is it and he said well the witch and I said then he said the final thing he said yes what else she clearly has a really good sense of humor

she's an absolute blast I love Margaret Hamilton after this so that was not the last cast change after filming it already started Buddy Ebson the tin man, woke up in the middle of the night, screaming in pain. He started having difficulty breathing, and that's when his wife calls the ambulance and he's rushed to a hospital. He spent the next two weeks recuperating in an oxygen tent because, get this, the makeup they'd used on him was pure aluminum. He had been inhaling aluminum. Oh, no. Yes. So the studio called and was like,

when are you coming back? Coming back tomorrow? Like, what's the deal? We got to put this paint back on you. When are you coming back to? Yeah. It takes a full day to get it on. Please come back. They were furious and expected him back at work within 24 hours despite the fact that his skin had literally turned blue. He was a blue human at this point. He blew himself. He blew himself. He did recover, but they didn't even wait for him to be done with his two-week treatment in the oxygen tent. They said, fuck you. And they immediately replaced him with Jack Haley. Oh my God. Because again, this movie, they were all about making money. They were like, you're going to set us back two weeks and we need you.

No, we're going to put somebody else in. That's terrible. It's really bad. So they stick to the schedule and they keep moving. And now, did they put the same paint on Jack Haley? No, they... I was like, we're just like, we're going to get through three days of filming with each of these fucking tin men until we kill every actor in Hollywood. No, they did actually fix.

Well, this sort of. They fixed it, but then it something said Jack Haley. also got some sort of like debilitating eye infection, but I guess he was able to keep going to this one's going to get you in your eye. You're going to lose that eye. Um, so we're getting, we're going to get into the munchkins for a little bit. Initially, they considered having the munchkins be children, but they decided that that many kids would be way too hard to control. So they decided to cast a mix of some children to like fill out the crowd, but mostly little people. One report that I found said they hired a man named Leo Singer, who was evidently like a little person agent.

at the time. Oh, I've heard about him. He, like, went all over the country. He, you know, he brought in the people that he represented. He also did things like scouring an exhibit at the World's Fair. Um, anyway, through some sort of nefarious processes. He came up with around 124 little people and a few actual kids peppered in. They were all supposed to look like kids, which like, when you look at it now, it's like, no, some of them are like 60 years old. Um, the bunchkins were a rowdy and sometimes terrifying. bunch for the few actual children that they were running around with, which shouldn't have surprised anyone because they were literally like carnival people. I mean, they worked at carnivals.

Like, they were used to a life on the road. They were here for a good time, not a long time, and damn it, they had one. Among tales of studios having to bail out munchkins for prostitution and constant drunken antics, my favorite story comes from Ray Bulger who played the scarecrow. He said one time after they all got back from a lunch break, there was one munchkin missing. Evidently, he'd gotten a little too drunk during his lunch break. And when they finally found him, he had fallen into the toilet. So his head and legs were sticking out and he was stuck. He had to be forcibly removed and dried off and sent back.

That's the thing, is that think about this opportunity for these little people. like they don't get to do this every month the way that the contract players did. This was a crazy, you know, wild experience for them. And also, by the way, you know the contract players and the other actors and crew members on set were also drunk a lot of the time. And a lot of them just knew how to handle it. Right. Versus the little people who came in and, you know, they were there to party, like to a certain degree. And I can't 100% blame them on that.

Yeah. It's just a recipe for. trauma for some of the younger actors. The six-year-olds who were like getting gin sweat on them trying to dance around with adult munchkins. Very strange combination. A less fun story about the munchkins comes from the book Judy Garland's ex-husband Sidney Left wrote after she had died.

In it he claimed that some of them would frequently reach up Garland's dress and basically made her life in Munchkin land a living hell. She was not alive to confirm or deny this, so I'm more hesitant attempt to put that in, but worth noting. So with that in mind, let's let that lead us into a whole section about the rest of the onset horrors during the Wizard of Oz. Here's a brief list of everything else that went wrong during the filming. So you actually mentioned this earlier, but that scene where they're laying in the poppy field and you see the snow fall on them? Yes. Can you guess what the snow was made out of?

Asbestos. Yes, it was. That was my first guess. Even when I was re-watching it, I was just like, Oh, it's asbestos. It has to be. It was pure asbestos. It looks great. There's a reason they used it. It's terrible. So that's step one.

Just a little bit of fiberglass in everybody's lungs there. Next up, the cowardly lion's lion suit? Yes. It was made from actual lion's skin and fur. What? Why? Well, they didn't have synthetic fur back then, I guess. When was synthetic fur and fur and fur?

I assumed it. was invented 200 years ago. Evidently not. And they could also only make one suit because I guess it was too hard to match the color of other dead lions. Okay, it was invented in 1929, but apparently it didn't look good until the 1940s. So it seems like they just were like, it doesn't look good enough. They can only make one suit, though. So it had to be dried out every night in an industrial dryer by two assistants because it was full of Bert Lars' stinky sweat. It weighed like 95 Because I'm sure it's got the skin attached to it too. So it's probably, it's like this giant

leather suit that he's basically wearing all day with like fur insulation and asbestos is getting rained down on him. And he's sweating nine pounds into this thing. Yeah. In addition to facial prosthetics. It was apparently smelled absolutely horrible. This one is insane. So Margaret Hamilton. Yes. Got second and third degree burns on her hands and face while filming her exit from Munchkin land. It's the first time she's appeared as the Wikiwitch of the West. Oh yeah, yeah. It's an amazing effect when she leaves. So there's a big cloud of smoke

and then there's a burst of flames and she's disappeared. And she's disappeared. I remember when I watched it and I was like, you can't do a composite that actually had, even if there's a trap door, they had to have done an explosion right there. So what happened, the first time that they did the shot, it worked great. And that's the cut that's in the movie is the first take. Right. And then they were like, but we

should do one more. They wanted to do one more. So the second time, what it was is they did have a trap door and they had an elevator built to lower her down when the smoke came up. The problem with the second take was they did not lower the elevator fast enough. So someone set the flames off before she'd exited the stage. And it's not a small explosion. If you watch the movie, this is a tunnel of fire with a little mushroom cloud at top that goes up nine feet, I would say, roughly. This is a big explosion. A friend came to take her to the hospital. Again, she had second and third degree burns on her face as well as hands. Hamilton said she was a little miffed that the studio didn't offer to have a limousine take her.

She had to recover for six weeks before she could start filming again, but she declined to sue because she, quote, wanted to work again, which just shows you the power that studio is held at the time. Almost immediately after she returned to the set, they asked her to shoot another fire scene. They ask her to do another scene involving fire. And she says, go fuck yourself. She says no. She says no. Good for her. She's like, why don't you do the scene where you throw water on me? So her double stepped in, who was immediately also badly burned. Her double received second and third degree burns as well, this time to her head scalp and like back and hands. Can you guess how much her double was paid for that day's work? I'm guessing $100.

$35. Oh. Which I know in 1939 was actually $200,000. But no, it wasn't. I know it wasn't. Hamilton also had residual skin problems from the copper makeup they used to turn her green. And by the way, when she was burned, they normally had been using acetone to take the makeup off, which is nail polish remover. I was going to ask about the makeup after the burns. They were using acetone.

So they couldn't use it because of the burns. They had to remove that makeup. And remember, she has third degree burns with rubbing alcohol. I put Neosporn on a paper cut the other day. I wanted to kill myself. So I honestly can't even imagine what she was going through. That's horrifying. Also, what's up with the...

Every paint was metal-based at the time. You had lead-based house paint, aluminum paint, copper paint. What was copper-tone sunscreen just rubbing pennies all over your body? Like, what is this? It's a miracle anybody lived past 17 before, like, 1960. One more makeup issue, Ray Bulger, who played The Scarecrow. Looking at this again, I was like, wow, how did they do the face makeup on him? Because it's really moving with his face and it's not just painted on.

That's because they straight up glued some kind of burlap mask to his face. Like he had facial prosthetics on. Oh, my God. That had to be ripped off at the end of... It looks great. He looks... It looks like skin because it's covering his whole face. He received disfiguring scars from his prosthetic makeup as well on his face.

While shooting a scene with the Cowerly Lion, some reports say Judy Garland couldn't stop giggling. So Victor Fleming, director at that moment, although plenty of other people will step in direct portions of the film, pulled her aside, slapped her across the face and told her to get to work, which she did. So the old William Friedkin, as they call it. The horses were dyed with jello. That one seems kind of okay.

They just got a nice snack. Yeah, except you're dying the horse with the horse. Oh my God, I just realized it's made from their hooves. It's mating from other horses. Oh, no. I literally, that didn't register until right now. I was waiting for the punchline, and then you just was like, so that's fine. No, I was like, seems fine.

They liked it. Oh, my gosh. Frank Morgan, who played the wizard, walked around with a suitcase full of alcohol. It was a full bar so he could make himself a drink at any time. He was hammered for like a lot of the shoot. So I'm guessing he and the munchkins probably had a good time. Now let's talk equal pay, shall we? Judy's male counterparts were earning sometimes upwards of 3,000 a week,

but thanks to an incredibly bad deal Judy's agent had struck with Louis B. Mayor, how much do you think Judy was earning per week? Star of the movie. So they're getting three. We know Margaret Hamilton's getting one. I have to think she's on par with Margaret Hamilton $500 a week. It's $500 a week. Oh my God, less than Margaret Hamilton?

Of the film's 10 main cast members, she was the second lowest paid, only to the dog that played Toto. That is just... Like, she's significantly more established than most of the men in this cast. She had a lot of Mickey Rooney movies under her belt, which had been a commercial success. And the men are unrecognizable

as they've been covered with, you know, things that are going to ruin their faces forever. She was clearly the star on the rise and an established star at the time. And she was making one-sixth? Yeah, one-sixth. One-sixth of what they were making. To top that off, this is debated.

I do want to say a lot of the information on the Wizard of Oz, everything you read, something else contradicts it. But there is some evidence to back this up. The rest of the guys in the cast were kind of assholes to her. They perceived the hyper focus on Judy's weight as undue attention and were constantly concerned that she would outshine them. This is not to say that she did not become friendly with them later and that she didn't consider them friends.

She did. They remained in touch. But there was enough out there that I believe this is true. And let's actually listen to Judy Garland herself. talking about her co-stars on the Jack Parr show in, I believe, 1962. Tell about the Wizard of Oz. Well, we were... Oh, I love her.

I had to work with three very professional, very professional men, you know, Jack Haley and Bert Lauer and Ray Boulter. And they had so much makeup on. You know, one was a tin man and one was the scarecrow and one was the cowardly lion. and they were so busy complaining about their makeups and each one was making bets as to which makeup was the most difficult and they all gained weight all way through the picture

and they all pretended it. But whenever we do that little dance up the yellow brick road I remember that. I was supposed to be with them. Yeah. They'd shut me out. They'd close in and the three and move

and I would be in back with them dancing. And I wasn't good enough you know, to say, wait a minute. And so the director, Victor Fleming, was dying then. He was always up on a boom. Would say, hold it. You three dirty hands. Let that little girl in there.

I love the hubris of three middle-aged men to be thinking to themselves, people are not going to see this movie because of Judy Garland. They're going to see this movie because of us. And we need to get to see this movie because of us. And we need to give them what they want. Well, and also the idea that this like attention on her was in any way positive. Yeah, it was a nightmare for her. I wish somebody would harang me about my weight.

It's like, what are you talking about? I know. For getting fat. They're always complaining about them getting fat. I feel like that was a little jab Judy. Oh, yeah. She's like, I would have loved to get fat on set, you assholes. Exactly.

All I wanted was a fucking cake. aside from Terry who played Toto. Terry was actually a female dog, by the way. There was one person who was truly kind and a friend to Judy Garland on set. Any ideas who it may have been? It must have been Margaret Hamilton. It was Margaret Hamilton, the Wikubish of the West.

Let's listen to a clip of Margaret and Judy reuniting in 1968 on the Merv Griffin Show. I missed you. You're my favorite witch. I better be. I think you're everybody's favorite. lady. It was lovely to see you, dear.

Or come back. I hope I can. Yes, indeed. I will indeed. I will indeed. Thank you for letting me. Come here. Yeah, just do that wicked me.

Yeah. She's just fun. She just, like, she loved the part. She loved being known for the part. She would actually continue to talk about it. She went back to teaching at one point. She also appeared on the Mr. Rogers' neighborhood in an episode that helped instruct kids about what actors were and not to be scared of the Wicked Witch of the West because she was

just an actor. Interesting. That was the whole episode. That was really cute. One brief final thing to note about production before we move on, even though Victor Fleming gets the credit for directing, as we've mentioned, he was one of many, many people who directed portions of this movie, including George Kuker, Marvin Leroy or Leroy, who was the producer of Wizard of Oz, Richard Thorpe, was actually the original director, and King Vidor, or Vidor, I don't know how to pronounce it, who stepped in to finish the movie for Fleming when Fleming hopped over to finish Gone with the wind after Kuker was fired from that. Vidor actually directed somewhere over the rainbow.

Oh, interesting. And a lot of the Kansas scenes, but didn't take any credit until after Fleming's death. And that's consistent with this idea of having directors under studio contract where the studio can move people around as needed. That's not, we've later talked about directors getting fired off movies and getting replaced. This is very different than that. It is because this is not a director's vision. This is the studio's vision.

Exactly. And I think even though it's like George Kuker and Victor Fleming, hopping in on Gone with the Wind, for example. We can double check this, but I think that the credits of that say David O. Selsnick's gone with the wind. He's the studio. Right, exactly. Producer. Yeah.

MGM also wanted to cut somewhere over the rainbow because they thought it was degrading for Judy Garland to sing in a barnyard. I'd like to point out they didn't feel it was degrading for her to be molested and only fed soup for years. So I have some questions about their morals. Yeah. They don't have any. It's all about perception.

All right. Just to close this out, the film receives its Hollywood premiere. at Gromond's Chinese Theater on August 15th, 1939. The world premiere was actually in Akkanamawak. There it is. I'm sorry for everyone in Wisconsin. Three days earlier, the 30s were really weird. I don't know why they had a world premiere in Wisconsin.

And then the actual, like, official official premiere was August 25th in New York. Judy Garland, along with her friend Mickey Rooney, are forced to basically do a live song and dance show after every screening in Hollywood for two weeks. Then Mickey Rooney was like, I'm 15 and I'm talking. hired. So they swapped him out for Bert Larr and Ray Bulger, both former vaudevillians for the final week. So she's done three weeks of like multiple shows a day doing this. Despite receiving great reviews being nominated for six Academy Awards, two at one, by the way, for somewhere over the rainbow and best score. And despite earning over three million at the box office for MGM, the film

actually left MGM in the whole for about $1.1 million after its initial release. That's after production, distribution, and marketing costs. So you mentioned that you thought the movie was from about 10 to 15 years later, right? For some reason, I thought it was post-World War II. There is a reason for that. Wizard of Oz, while it did well when it was released, does not become part of the cultural conscious until 1956. That is when MGM sold the TV rights for the Wizard of Oz to CBS

for $225,000 per broadcast, which was a shitload. It was first shown on November 3, 1956, millions of people tuned in. They screened it again in December, and again it receives very high Nielsen ratings. It then becomes an annual tradition where they air it every year and families would watch the Wizard of Oz on TV, making the movie an indelible part of American culture and also making MGM so much money. So that's why you may think of it as something from the mid-50s is because it was not that well-known until 1956. Judy Garland, as many may know, would continue to struggle with drugs and alcohol for the rest of her life. She was completely dependent on those diet pills as well as completely dependent on the barbiturates and downers that were used for her to sleep. She passed away from an accidental overdose on June 22nd, 1969, only a few months after marrying her fifth husband, Mickey Deans.

Despite having been one of the most successful actresses of her time when she died, her estate was only reportedly worth somewhere around $40,000. Oh my God. This is supposedly due to both mismanagement by her team of horrible people. around her and also to her generosity, she reportedly had a habit of giving money to any friend or family member in need. At her funeral, this is going to make me cry. At her funeral, Ray Bulger, the scarecrow, said, quote, she just plain war out. And I want to leave you on a quote from Judy Garland that she said when she was initially working on a memoir, which she never completed. This is a couple years before she died. Quote, I tried my dad.

to believe in that rainbow that I tried to get over, and I couldn't. I just couldn't. So what? The last thing I'll play is a recording of Judy's final performance of somewhere over the rainbow at a concert in Copenhagen only three months before she died. I must sit down, really, with these feathers and high heels. Well, it will look splendid. So we hit the song. And this is to you, because I'm dedicated to you. Thank you for coming. Some way that I...

When she says that this is for you because I'm dedicated to you, it's just like she really, she was. Her entire life she was. And I think she had a really sad, I think she had a really sad life. She owed a ton of money in back taxes. It's just like... It's just, everybody's just... at her for something. Nobody took care of her or was looking out for her. And just everybody, every,

people could only see what they wanted from her. You look at some of the child stars of the 90s that, you know, burned out, I think, under different yet similar circumstances. And like most children are compelled pathologically to give adults whatever they ask for. And so if you then have adults inappropriately ask you for everything, that just becomes the default operating mode for the rest of your life. And so it makes perfect sense that she's giving all of this away constantly. Well, also, you know, people, I think, sort of crap on her for, like, having so many husbands and so many failed marriages. And that's certainly something that you see in interviews with her. People ask her about, like, you know, do you think it's difficult to be married to an actress? And she's like, I didn't think it was that

difficult, but evidently all my husbands did. But it's like, given a, what we know about her upbringing, how could you possibly expect her to have a successful relationship? Just terrible. And I would just say my last thought is just that Hollywood will always remain in industry where it's very easy to abuse people because people so desperately want to tell stories and want to be a part of productions that tell stories that they're willing to put up with a great deal and they're willing to silence themselves for fear of not getting an opportunity again. That's why people like Harvey Weinstein

have been able to continue working. Not just people like Harvey Weinstein. There are plenty of active directors, active actors, and sometimes actresses and people who behave in nightmarish ways. But they have a lot of power, they make a lot of money,

and you'll notice I'm not naming names either right now. And it is an industry built on interpersonal relationships now, so even though the studios don't control everything from the top down, there is still a lot of control and it's a small business. I mean, like as big as it is, it is a small business. People sometimes say that movie productions are like a family. And the problem with that is that most abuse happens inside of families.

It opens the door for predators to cross the line in ways dealing with sexual impropriety, in ways dealing with financial impropriety. It allows people to say that they have your best. interests at heart when that's not the case. I will say one thing I find interesting to just step aside from the Judy Garland stuff is that I think in a lot of ways the Wizard of Oz might have been too escapist, too fantastic, too almost optimistic for its original release date. When you think about where the United States was, where the world was, when that movie came out, and then you think of when it found its success during the era of great American expansion in the 1950s.

when opportunities abounded. Our economy was growing at 7% a year. We were rebuilding the world. The United States was the greatest country, and there was no place like home. That feels like the technical or dream that the Wizard of Oz would succeed. And so it makes sense looking back on it,

that it wouldn't find its footing until that later era. That's really interesting. I think you're 100% right, Because actually one of the things that they said when it came out, when it didn't immediately make the money, they were just kind of like, well, you know, we always knew fantasy was kind of a gamble. And in fact, a lot of the previous revisions of previous versions were to try and remove a lot of the magic and fantasy out of it because it was a concern. And to their credit, Victor Fleming and I think an assistant producer actually fought really hard to keep a lot of that stuff in, including somewhere over the rainbow. And that's the stuff that holds up the best now is the fantastical elements. so I'm glad that they fought for it and that's the movie that we ended up with.

All right. So what went right? The movie is incredible. It's remarkable. It looks amazing. It sounds great. The songs are beautiful. Judy Garland is transcendent. Also, its lasting relevance on the cultural zeitgeist. It continues to be remade. Never to the same effect, which I think is important to note as various spinoffs, etc. of happened of the Wizard of Oz, none have ever captured the magic that that first one did. And it actually calls into question the idea that you need an autour to deliver something that's unique and transcendent artistically, because this movie didn't have that. It had a lot of really skilled people that did a job every day working towards one vision and they created something that was greater than the sum of its parts. So just food for thought on that front. Yeah, I mean, I would say what

went right for me is Judy Garland's acting performance. Like I said at the top of this, I was really blown away by the sort of natural emotion and like clear empathy that came from her. And I really, I understand the fascination with her now and I understand the really deep love for her because I think as she said in that final clip, like, I am dedicated to you. She's dedicated to the audience to telling the story and there is something really kind of selfless about Judy Garland's performance across the board but particularly in this. And I just, I think it's really terrible what they did to her because she was amazing. So on that note, the next time you want to make fun of McCauley Culkin and Lindsay Lohan and Corey Feldman, remember these were children

who just wanted to please you, the audience. Yeah. And that can fuck you. You. you up. On that happy note, we'd like to thank you guys for listening this week. We'll see you next week. And we will talk to you next week for another episode of What Went Wrong. We are going to be diving into the 1967 tire fire that was Dr. Doolittle. Thanks, guys. Talk to you next week. What Went Wrong is a Sat Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Y Klauna U.S. I don't know.