As expected, I had to muffle all the music audio/not include the majority of it due to copyright reasons :( And also muffle some dialogue audio that had music behind it as well-- but just know I enjoyed all of the music, of course! Hope you all enjoy the reaction! :)
For completely understandable reasons, watching a RUclips reaction to a musical is a challenge... Although I enjoyed watching your amusement at discovering this classic, I find myself missing the music and the songs I've known since I was old enough to watch this in the mid-'60s. So, you'll excuse me if I'm off to see a reactor who can sing! Kidding! This was fun, thanks Sam! ;-]
The older one gets, I think the harder the end of the film gets. Because it starts to remind you of your life. Family, friends...the first time seeing this. This is one of those films where I watch it and I start missing Family that has since passed away. I do love your reactions to things. I realized that, part of why I do love watching you react to movies....is you remind me a little of Rosie O'Donnell. (This is a good thing). Meaning...you have that sassy New Yorker thing, but it also feels like a best friend cuddled up on the couch watching a film with you. Just The type of weekend where one needs it like...this week. Most of us are in weather so cold it is going to make things freeze off and fall off if we aren't careful. So...a weekend with some movies, a BFF and some popcorn and it is just a perfect time. Rosie O'Donnell has always struck me as the type of person you could ask to do something like that and she would say yes. You have it as well. It is a good quality. 🤗
@@GaryTongue-to3pw No… I DID have to. You genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. Other RUclipsrs also do not include music because of COPYRIGHT. We will physically have our videos BLOCKED by RUclips if we include copyrighted content that we do not mute or muffle, especially audio. I’ve been doing this for years so please be aware I know what I’m doing. Hell, the first time I uploaded this, I had to fix and reupload it because I had to take out a part of it BECAUSE RUclips caught some song that I thought was just dialogue but WAS apart of a song, and my video was blocked. I HAD to not include the music. Please do not be rude and come at me for something you clearly are wrong about. Thank you.
My grandmother was born in 1914, and was old enough to have seen this in theatres. She told me that it was a special treat to go to a movie with her father in Pittsburgh as a father-daughter trip between his work, and this was one movie they saw on a rare day out! She described it along these lines: "Oh, I remember a big flash of colour, like nothing we'd seen yet, not before then. It was like sticking your head in a bucket of water and coming back up for air and seeing a whole new world, like you took a breath in and thought you might taste candy in your mouth because of all the colours! And the sound, the music I remember the heels of our shoes hitting the floor, made a sound like everyone was tap dancing on those old floors. But the colour, nothing in the world was like it. The colour itself was a personality, it made the fantastical really fantastic. Like your eyes couldn't perceive colour like that, and suddenly they could."
And this kind of three-strip technicolor had already been around for a few years. But seeing it right after 15 minutes of sepiatone, revealed within the same shot, must have been insane.
@@RmlohnerIt had been around, but I can imagine lots of people had not seen it yet, as the majority of films back then were still shot in B&W. I can imagine it was a big shock to the senses when Oz came into view. I bet it seemed like the brightest color ever!🤣
In 1998, for a Wizard of Oz listing on TCM, writer Rick Polito wrote, "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
You know, I've seen this movie so many times throughout the years and I never looked at it from that perspective before. This is why I love scrolling the youtube comments.
I don't know if you noticed, but the scarecrow was the one coming up with all the ideas, and the tin man kept rusting because he was so sentimental. And the lion faced the witch in spite of his fears.
Fun fact: Margaret Hamilton was always moved to tears when watching the scene where the Wizard gives out his gifts to the protagonists (diploma, medal, clock, etc.) because, according to her, Frank Morgan was just as generous and kind in real life.
71-yr-old great grandma here... this is one of my favorite movies of all time... watched it many times... I can categorically state that this is the first time I have heard the wicked witch referred to as a ho-bag. 🤭
A lot of this movie was designed as basically a magic show with then-cutting edge special effects, and the big jaw-dropper was the change from black and white to color. This wasn't the first movie to feature both, but the change occurring within a single shot blew people's minds and still is perfectly convincing. That early part of the shot with Dorothy opening the door isn't Judy Garland but another girl wearing a copy of her dress that was actually black and white, and then she backs out of the shot for Judy to come in. Unfortunately, one effect that didn't work out so well is the Witch's disappearance in a fireball at the end of her first scene. It was the first take and more of a proof of concept for the effect, so they weren't especially worried about hiding the trapdoor she disappears down. But Margaret Hamilton suffered burns on her arms from the pyrotechnics and understandably refused to do it again, so they were forced to put that shot in the finished film.
Additionally, Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies TV series, if anyone here is old enough to remember that!) was initially cast for and started filming as the Tin Man, but he had a terrible allergic reaction to the makeup (terrible as in hospitalized and then out of commission for some time recovering) and had to be replaced last minute.
@@bettrhalf8006 Yeah, the entire production was plagued with such problems. It's a wonder it was ever finished. Edit: I remember the Beverly Hillbillies! Mainly because my family watched a *lot* of Nick at Night when I was a kid.
You didn't grow up when there were only 3 TV stations and maybe a 4th one with PBS. Once every year this movie was shown on broadcast television. It was a nice surprise to watch this after we finally got a color TV. The Wizard of Oz became part of our culture - and you found the source of so many things. I love this movie!!!
Trivia for when the film goes into color. That specific shot was filmed with color film. So to make that shot work they had to have all the inside of the house painted to look sepia toned. When Dorothy opens the door she's sepia toned too. So they had to have a double for Dorothy dressed and made up sepia toned. She opens the door to Oz, steps out of frame, and then Judy Garland dressed and made up for color film steps into the shot to walk into Oz.
It’s hard to explain just how important this movie was to American kids born between 1950 and 1980. In the pre-VCR and pre-streaming days The Wizard of Oz was aired annually on national television first on CBS (1956-1967) then on NBC (1968-1975) and then back to CBS (1976-1998). The movie’s popularity on television started to wane in the ‘90s due to the movie’s ready access on home video and the splintering of TV audiences with the rise of cable. But throughout the late ‘50s and well into the ‘80s those annual broadcasts were big events. Usually discussed at length at school before and after the broadcast.
The point that people can hardly grasp today is that before VCRs, you had ONE chance to see this movie during a particular two-hour time slot every year, and if you missed it, you wouldn't have another chance for an entire year. And if you saw it and loved it, and wanted to see it again, you also wouldn't have another chance for a whole year.
I remember that every time this on (which was like once a year) my sister and I would run home after evening services at church, which was thankfully right next door.
Yes! It was an event just as exciting as Christmas and birthdays. That's why I still count it as my favorite movie even though i've seen it ten gazillion times.
1974 - second grade a classmate in "show and tell" showed us several black and white photos of behind the scenes from The Wizard of Oz, her grandmother was Margaret Hamilton (Witch of the West). As an 8 yr old i was in awe. ;-).
What amazes me is that the effects hold up very well all these years later. The sets, costumes, music, choreography and cinematography are all just amazing.
A point that many miss is that the scarecrow hardly makes a misstatement through the whole movie but as soon as he has his diploma he botches the Pythagorean theorem.
The three actors portraying Dorothy's companions (Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr) were all veteran song-and-dance men of the stage in the last years of Burlesque. This made them perfectly suited to bring these characters to life. Their highly stylized physical performances would be hard to duplicate today. Thanks for sharing this with us!
In the book, the reason Glinda doesn’t tell Dorothy how to get home right away is because they don’t meet until the penultimate chapter. The movie condensed the two good witches into one character. The basic story is still relatively faithful to the plot of the novel, but the filmmakers made quite a few changes. Maybe the biggest difference is that in the books, Oz is real and not a dream. In fact, by the sixth book, Dorothy moves there permanently with her aunt and uncle.
The movie is a classic in its own right; but I will say that book does a better job of making it clear that each of the three friends *_already has_* the quality they are looking for. Throughout the film we DO see the Scarecrow thinking, but the only example of courage we see from the Lion is from his counterpart in Kansas (when he rescues Dorothy from the pigs); and the Tin Man only cries a lot, without showing any more tangible evidence of actually _caring._ - also, if this were Hogwarts, the Lion would be Gryffindor, the Scarecrow would be Ravenclaw, the Tin Man would be Hufflepuff…so does that mean then that Dorothy would be Slytherin?
Yes, the Witch of the North is her own character and Glinda is the Witch of the South. The Witch of the North knew the shoes (which were silver) were magic, but not what they would do. They only find out when they go to the South to see Glinda, who tells Dorothy the shoes can take her home. As it is, Dorothy gets home, but as she flies across the desert, she loses the shoes. It wasn't a dream in the book. In fact, they're rebuilding the house when Dorothy gets home and Auntie Em asks where she was all that time.
If you're wondering about the Witch's line about sending an "insect" after Dorothy which never gets a payoff, it's talking about a "Jitterbug" whose entire scene was cut for slowing down the third act too much. And this worked out very well, as removing this obvious reference to a major popular dance from the late 1930s left nothing in the film specifically tying it to the time it was made, which has allowed every generation of kids since to enjoy it without having to ask any questions about what something means.
Frank Morgan played Professor Marvel, the Emerald City Doorman, The Horse of a Different Color Driver, the Security Doorman for OZ and the Wizard of OZ himself.
@@tommiller4895you can say that he is Frank "Oz" now just imagine a Muppets version of Wizard of Oz with Frank Oz as OZ. Allthou in a twisted way the scene in spaceballs emulating the wizard of Oz and they meet yoghurt the Yoda substitute and Yoda being voiced by Frank Oz is kinda the Muppets version of WoO
This movie only came on television during the holidays when I was a child. I would get so scared of the flying monkeys...and also got bored during the black and white segments. Then I watched it as an adult and absolutely blubbered at the end. My favorite sequences are Munchkinland, The Tin Man's song & dance, and the chorus as the four run out of the poppy field and up to the Emerald City: "You're out of the woods, you're out of the dark, you're out of the night...step into the sun, step into the light."
My mother saw this in the theater in 1939. She was 16. She said the scene where the door opens and changes to color blew everyone’s minds. Color was around but not used much. Such a grand transition. A piece of cinematic history. Awesome reaction. Always a favorite!!!!
My mom too! This was her first color movie and she was just so amazed when the door opened! She was 13 or 14 years old. I think she saw Gone With The Wind 10 years later even though it was released in 1939 as well.
To answer your question, Yes, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion and the farmhands are the same people. There's even a bit of foreshadowing as to which farmhand is which character: One of them accuses Dorothy of having no brains- He becomes the Scarecrow. One of them talks about them erecting a statue in his honor- He becomes the Tin Man, and the other one almost has a heart attack when Dorothy falls into the pig trough and they tease him about losing his courage- He becomes the Cowardly Lion Also, Professor Marvel, the Driver of the Horse of a Different Color; the Doorman; the Wizard's Guard and the Wizard were all played by the same actor. Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West was working at a children's daycare when she was offered the part. She and Judy Garland, who played Dorothy were very close friends, and Garland said she had trouble being afraid of Hamilton because she was so nice in real life. Hamilton said the scene where she forced Dorothy, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry to hand over Toto so she could have him destroyed was the hardest scene for her to do because she was such an animal lover in real life. Margaret Hamilton once appeared on an episode of Mister Roger's Neighborhood to show children that she wasn't mean in real life, that she was just pretending. She even put on the witch's costume, without the green makeup of course, to show that it was all just make believe.
Yes, the three farmhands were the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. Not only that Miss Gulch was also the Wicked Witch of the West, and Professor Marvel was the Doorman of the Emerald City, the Cabbie, the guard outside the Wizards castle, and one other important character.. In a deleted scene Glinda was (back in Kanas) a friendly, chatty neighbor of Dorothy.
I think these chanted lines are meant to evoke something similar to the "Ey, ukhnyem!" chant in the traditional Russian "Song of the Volga Boatmen." There, it literally means, "Yo, heave ho!" The Winkies aren't engaged in a physical task, so it doesn't have that precise meaning. Rather, it's a marching song. But their uniforms do look rather Russian.
If you google for it you will find several interpretations and mine is among them. I heard it from Rush Limbaugh, years before the great man passed. @@Heroshii15
Fun fact: they almost left somewhere over the rainbow on the cutting room floor. Good thing they didn't considering it became the most beloved songs of the whole movie.
The "Snow" which broke the Poppy's spell was actually Cancer causing Asbestos which covered the poor Actors. The Tin Man's Silver Makeup and the Witch's Green Makeuo was Toxic and would be banned today. Another Actor started playing the role of the Tin Man (Buddy Ebsen aka Jed Clampett) but he was severely allergic to the Silver Makeup and had to be replace by Actor Jack Haley. The Witch's Green Makeup actually caught on fire in the Emerald City scene and severly burned poor Margaret Hamilton's hands and face.
"And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much YOU love; but by how much you are loved by others." Fun Fact: Judy Garland found it difficult to be afraid of Margaret Hamilton, because she was such a nice lady off-camera. Horse Colors Fact: The horses in Emerald City palace were colored with Jell-O crystals. The relevant scenes had to be shot quickly, before the horses started to lick it off. Music Enthusiast Fact: Over the Rainbow (1939) was nearly cut from the film; MGM felt that it made the Kansas sequence too long, as well as being too far over the heads of the children for whom it was intended. The studio also thought that it was degrading for Judy Garland to sing in a barnyard. Sky Effect Fact: The famous "Surrender Dorothy" sky writing scene was done using a tank of water and a tiny model which was attached to the end of a long hypodermic needle. The syringe was filled with milk, the tip of the needle was put into the tank and the words were written in reverse while being filmed from below. Found Treasure Fact: When the wardrobe department was looking for a coat for Frank Morgan (Prof. Marvel / The Wizard), it decided it wanted one that looked like it had once been elegant but was a little tattered. They visited a second-hand store and purchased an entire rack of coats, from which Morgan, the head of the wardrobe department and director Victor Fleming chose one they felt gave off the perfect appearance of shabby gentility. One day, while he was on set in the coat, Morgan idly turned out one of the pockets and discovered a label indicating that the coat had been made for L. Frank Baum. Mary Mayer, a unit publicist for the film, contacted the tailor and Baum's widow, who both verified that the coat had at one time been owned by the author of the original Wizard Of Oz books. After the filming was completed, the coat was presented to Mrs. Baum.
@@rainbowpegacornstudios Interesting. I despise that quote. I get what Baum was trying to say. But there are many people in this world with an enormous heart, a great capacity for love, who are alone, or who are unappreciated by others. Not everyone who loves well is loved well in return. Some of the most giving people are taken for granted and some of the most selfish, heartless people are totally adored. I believe if we judge someone’s heart, it should be based on how much love they give, not how much they receive in return. Sigh.
What about the fact that Ms Gulch was probably killed in that tornado since DOrothy was so happy to be home at the end , " no place like home" but the order to kill Toto was still active unless the tornado actually KILLED Ms. Gulch! Dorothy must have gotten a sixth sense in her dream melting the witch, sensing that Gulch was killed in the tornado.
"Somebody's pulling my tail." One of my favorite lines from any movie. Quotable whenever someone is complaining about a problem they've caused for themselves. 🙃
Yes, this is one of those films that's important for cultural literacy. Good catch that poppies only have an effect on the 2 biological characters. And, yes, as others are noting, to this day I still refer to stimulants as Judy Garland pills.
This movie was such a big deal that people were still referencing it in movies *regularly* in the '80s. They used to air this annually on one of the broadcast TV networks, before everyone had cable, and I remember taping it off TV on VHS as a kindergartner circa '85. If you go back and re-watch Spaceballs, you may discover that Mel Brooks referenced it in more scenes than you thought! The film was based on a series of books by L Frank Baum, but in the books Oz is a real place that Dorothy goes back to multiple times in her life, and a lot of the travels and events of the first book are omitted for time. (Thus creating the Glinda loophole: the Good Witches of the North and South were originally two separate people, and Dorothy doesn't meet Glinda of the South, who knows how the shoes work, until the end of the book. The Good Witch of the North wasn't named in the first book, but Locasta and Addaperle are two of the names she's been given over the years by different creators.) As far as other works adapted from the books: in addition to Return to Oz, which I have not seen personally but which traumatized *many* others of my age, you might someday want to check out The Wiz. The Wiz is a pair of adaptations (first a Broadway play, then a film) both made in the '70s with all-Black casts. The Wiz (play) is from what I understand a reasonably faithful musical adaptation of the book (moreso than *this* film) but with Black characters. The Wiz (film) changed the story up even more than this film, so that they could cast the very-not-a-teenager Diana Ross as Dorothy, turning her into a shy Harlem kindergarten teacher and turning Oz into a dark urban fantasy New York. The film... drags in a few places... but I absolutely loved the sheer creative terror of the visuals, which are straight out of a kid's nightmares, and the music (almost all of it retained from the play) was fantastic all-around. Mabel King's performance as Wicked Witch of the West is to die for; her "I want" song is up there with Ursula's "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from The Little Mermaid a decade and change later.
And people often leave out the fact that in the book, the slippers are SILVER, not ruby. But of course silver would not have been as dramatic as the ruby red slippers. A pair of those red slippers are on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
The line " I'll miss you most of all" is from a cut idea that Dorothy and the farm hand that plays the scarecrow were going to have a budding romance but was cut because they were trying to make her look younger
Girly, i dont know what your source is but i haven't find any proof of this. The book doesn't have any reference to it. And there was a scene in the scrip where in the final scenes when she wakes up she realizes that he is going to college and he makes her promise that she will write to him, signaling that i the future that could happend. But there was not a romances cut from the original scritp, thats totally different
OGB: Well, everyone got what they needed, or they had it all along. As the musical group America once said, Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man, that he didn't already have 😄
'Somewhere over the Rainbow' won the Oscar for Best Original Song... Mrs. Gluch/the Wicked Witch- Actress Margaret Hamilton SHOULD have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress- one of \THE most iconic roles/performances in film history.
Another movie that has many social and cultural references is Casablanca. If you haven’t seen that you no doubt will enjoy that iconic movie. One of the classics!
Fun fact: During "If I Only Had A Heart", the line "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" is actually Adriana Caselotti, who voiced Snow White a couple of years prior to this movie.
*FUN FACTS* the coat that professor Marvel is wearing when Dorothy meets him is actually L. Frank Baum's coat. The actress who played the wicked witch was formerly an elementary school teacher She also made an appearance on Sesame Street and Mr Rogers Neighborhood years later There was a horrible accident during scene when the witch disappears after leaving Munchkin land She was supposed to drop through a trap door and the pyrotechnics went off too early and the actress was horribly burned and was in the hospital recording for several months Upon her return to the set the first thing they wanted her to do was ride the broomstick which spelled out "Surrender Dorothy" She refused and so they got her stunt double to do it instead and there was a technical malfunction and the broomstick exploded
I love this movie so much, and I love seeing people watch it for the first time even more! I'm so excited to watch it in theatres soon with it's anniversary event going on.
I really don't understand how it's possible for someone to have not seen this but you are not alone. You are the second or third RUclipsr who has reacted to this, that I've seen, who is seeing it for the first time. In my entire life, I have only met one person who has not seen this and she was from Moscow and grew up behind the iron curtain. There are so many movies though. Everyone has something they haven't seen. That's part of the fun.
The actress who played the Witch, Margaret Hamilton, got badly burned in the fireball where she disappears from Munchkin land. Also, for decades, there was a rumor that one of the Munchkin actors hung themselves on the set, and no one noticed until after filming and you can see the body somewhere in the background in the movie, but it’s completely bogus (as far as I know).
It's in the shot of the group walking down the road after meeting the Tin Man. I have no idea how anyone thought it's a guy hanging himself; it's so clearly a bird spreading its wings.
The rumor came from the low-resolution version seen on early tv's. But it is completely bogus - those aren't real trees in the background that would support anyone's weight. These were closed sets and the Munchkins would not have been on the set. There are tons of other people, anyone of whom would have noticed something like this happening.
Hamilton didn't get burned on this take - they had this one and decided to do it one more time for backup. The stage hands rushed to wipe her burned skin with rubbing alcohol because the green makeup contained poisonous copper, so they had to get it off right away. (Her double got burned on the skywriting scene when the broom blew up. And the snow was asbestos.)
Yes, the hanging Munchkin rumor is total nonsense. It’s been debunked many times, but some people still refuse to accept that it isn’t true, annoyingly.
The actress who plays Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West was actually very kind. Of course, she was an actress. Incredible actress. She only passed away in 1985 and was working pretty much until the end. She is in a well known coffee commercial from the 80’s that’s on RUclips. Her name is Margaret Hamilton.
It’s bittersweet when I find adults who love movies like you who hv never seen this one! So glad you got to it! 😊😊❤ Marvel, the doorman, carriage driver, guard, Oz were all the same actor
Dorothy's pig tails change from long to short several times throughout the movie. This movie was on every year when I was growing up. I'm 69 & still love it. The Cowardly Lion was always my favorite character. When I was a kid, I thought the witches soldiers were singing "Oreo's. Yum yum! Oreo's. Yum yum!" I really enjoyed rewatching it with you. Thanks for the memory.
Growing up, the wizard of Oz was a very big thing in our house. They played it on TV ever so often and we got so excited when we got off the bus and mom said the wizard of Oz is coming on tv tonight
I grew up watching "Wizard of Oz." They broadcast it on television one Sunday evening every year. It was fun as hell watching it fresh again vicariously through your eyes as an adult. It brought back all the magic. Thanks for your reaction!
In the days of network TV, this was an annual tradition. Everyone who watched TV, grew up seeing this annually. It is strange that so many have not seen it. Welcome to the club!
This is such a great classic. I remember when I was younger I would spend weekends at my cousins house and we'd camp out in the living room watching this movie on repeat every time I visited lol.
I grew up in Kansas, so it's like an unwritten law that you have to have seen this movie. When I was a kid, this was shown once a year with no advertisement breaks (This was the era before VCRs), so I had seen it multiple times before I was 7. I am floored that someone your age hasn't seen it yet.
Odd copyright note: While the Wicked Witch has been allowed to appear in several other stories, they're not allowed to color her the same shade of green that she is here. Which is why she looks so off in stuff like Once Upon a Time and Oz: The Great and Powerful.
This might be the most quoted movie of all time. 11 more years until it hits public domain. The actress who played the wicked witch was actually once a kindergarten teacher. Not too long ago they found a lost episode of Sesame Street where she made an appearance as the witch which she did many years after this. It was the most sought after lost episode of Sesame Street
Great reaction! I'd love to see you react to The Wiz. It's The Wizard of Oz, but different. There are some significant differences between the two films, but overall it's Dorothy's journey with her friends to see the Wizard
Saw this for the first time on tv as a kid in the early 60s. When the ruby slippers vanished and those striped feet and legs curled up I was totally freaked. I can remember having a nightmare about the witch and the flying monkeys.
The movie may be magical but production was nightmarish for young Judy Garland. in those days the studios essentially OWNED you if you were under contract and it was especially bad for younger actors. They starved her to keep her "perfect figure" and offered a steady supply of pills to keep working around the clock.
I was impressed by how quickly you predicted the farm characters would be characters in Oz. Then you forgot about it, but it came back to you. Good catch!
I'm delighted by you knowing the music just through osmosis of living in society! It's so cool how this movie and it's sounds are such a baseline in our culture. Like the Wicked Witch theme is an *instant* "this is a bad guy" give away!
In the book the ruby slippers were silver. They tried that for the movie but they didn't stand out so they made them pop with color being ruby slippers. And also Dorothy did go to the land of Oz. They made it into it being a dream for the movie for various reasons. There's a lot of behind the scenes details. Not all of them are good. They gave her drugs to keep her awake long and had her on an all liquid diet to slim her even though she was slim.
If you ask me, shortening the message was a half measure. If they didn’t want to scare kids, cut the entire scene. I’m happy it exists as is, but it is still such a dark scene, they should have gone all the way. They scared kids with that scene, anyway.
When I was a little kid in the 60's, "The Wizard Of Oz" was shown on TV every year, once a year in about January. My mom made sure we got to see it, but the Wicked Witch of The West used to scare the hell out of me, especially when she was on the roof of the house, and then with her flying monkeys. Shudder. As I aged I got over it, but still enjoyed it a lot. Now you can watch "TWOO" with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" as the backing track, and it works very well. Someone figured it out, and now two of my favorite bits of media can be seen and heard as one. Glad you enjoyed it.
I've been watching this movie since the early 60s when it was being shown on network TV once a year. The winged monkeys didn't bother me, and neither did the witch. The tornado, however, scared me to death. To this day in my 60s tornadoes still terrify me, although I'm better than I used to be.
Do you have tornadoes in the area you live in? I've never seen one, but there was a localised tornado one afternoon when I was about sixteen. It was about five minutes' drive away from my school, so I was relatively close but blissfully unaware as I was sitting in Media Studies class, writing about horror movie conventions (one of the exams was a genre study and our teacher chose horror as our genre, although we were given the option to skip the scariest one and we had none of the 80s slasher movies, even though they are integral to the horror genre).
@@strawberrysoulforever8336 We do. They've been close but I've never actually seen one. The closest I've been to one is probably from the mid-60s around the first time I saw TWoO, when one hit the south side of the city I was living in at the time. We were living in the center of the city, probably about 5 miles north of where it hit. It ripped the roofs off of a couple of stores and restaurants we used to go to. I do remember incredibly strong winds at that time blowing stuff down the street. At about the same time another tornado destroyed a big chunk of a town about 10 miles away to the south, and my Dad decided to drive us all down there a few days later to take a look. It was horrible. Those events plus seeing TWoO probably scarred me for life. 🙀🙀🙀
I was born in 90, but was OBSESSED with this movie as a kid. I still have an illogical fear of tornadoes, but i loved the Witch and her Guards. I pretended i was a Guard as a kid 😅
Back in the 60's when I was just a little kid, this was so scary, and we looked forward to seeing it every year! The witch with the fire on the roof....Oz bellowing and poor lion jumping out of the window (that's where the commercial break came!) It was magical. Now it might seem a little lame but it was a delight way back when. (And one of our favorite quotes, "I'm melting, I'm melting" and of course, "There's no place like home!))
And there’s the book / musical called Wicked, telling you the story from the point of view of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West… she and Glinda where roomies in the magic university! The song “Defying Gravity” from the musical is a real showstopper.
In the first book, they have to wear glasses to "protect" their eyes from the Emerald City's brightness, but these are really just to make everything appear green.
This movie was on TV every year during the 60s and 70s, so many of us from that era have seen it multiple times. When I was little my family only had a black and white TV so that reveal when she lands in Munchkin Land didn’t show up on my screen. After I had seen it several times, I was over at my great aunts house, who did have a color TV and I was scared to death of the green wicked witch! I remember hiding behind my great uncle’s recliner when she was on the screen, lol. You caught on immediately that Dorothy‘s journey was a dream that happened after she got conked out in the storm. Obviously, as a child, I didn’t make the connection that fast. I was convinced that she really did travel via the tornado to Oz! So, when reality finally leaked in, & I understood that it was a dream, I was very resistant to it. I remember being quite upset that it wasn’t real! As many times as I’ve seen this movie, watching it with you today was the first time that it occurred to me that while Dorothy was glad to be home, she still faced the issue of Miss Gulch trying to get her dog destroyed. What ever happened with that? 🤷♀️😄
Miss Gulch's backstory, subsequent life, and her deleted number from *The Wizard of Oz* are all revealed in Fred Barton's one-man musical, *Miss Gulch Returns!* (1984).
I've always wondered about the water killing the witch. I think I've come up with something. It wasn't just because it was water, it was a combination Dorothy had the ruby slippers on and was using the water to save the scarecrow. So in essence her goodness was in the water empowered by the slippers. Sounds far fatched but best I can think of.
@davidfox5383 but the only problem with that, and the biggest issue people have always had with that scene is then why was the water there? Who would allow people who only worked for you out of fear have access to there greatest weakness on the daily just to keep her home clean? And by the looks of the place it wasn't exactly spotless, so why was the water there other then to use on the witch at that exact point in time? Everyone hated her and could easily killer her at any moment. So I will stand by my theory. If for no other reason then so it makes sense to me. It's bad enough that in the sequel the gnome king dies by chicken egg. At least we can say he was allergic or something. The big bads in OZ die way to easily for them to have gotten so big to be so bad in the lands of Oz.
The Greatest fantasy movie of all time! They show this every Thanksgiving weekend on TNT and TBS as well as Cartoon Network TCM. I remember watching this with my older sister and she thought The Cowardly Lion was an adorable character wanting a little courage.
Congrats on knocking this one off your Bucket List and giving you your Unified Field Theory of all the references you've known from other sources. The first 20 or 21 times I watched this was on a black-and-white TV, so seeing it in color at a college screening in the early 1980s was a revelation.
To not know that Somewhere Over the Rainbow is from the Wizard of Oz, to my generation, is like saying you came from another planet, or have permanent amnesia...
This film is the epitome of a good G-rated film! When I was growing up, I had a neurologist who treated one of the original surviving actresses who played one of the Lullabye League munchkins from this movie!
In the play, Uncle Henry is the Wizard of Oz and Aunt Em is Glinda. There is no Professor Marvel, and the Jitterbug song is intact. I had the pleasure of designing the Jitterbug costumes for a local production.
I used to watch this film every year with my mom when I was growing up, as it used to air yearly on one of the three big commercial networks. It was a family tradition to sit down to enjoy this fantasy romp every year. My mom can do a very good impersonation of the Witch's voice. And would quote lines sometimes. I did read the novel this was based on when I was a kid and at least one of the other OZ books, of which there are many! The original actor cast as the Tin Woodsman, Buddy Ebson (Later famous on TV as Jed Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies") had a bad allergic reaction to the silver makeup and almost died. So he was replaced with Jack Haley. This movie, as you might have guessed, was filmed entirely on soundstages with no actual exterior shots so they could control the conditions. Late in Margaret Hamilton's career she appeared in the darkly comic film "Brewster McCloud" and the director threw in a little inside joke to Oz. In her final scene the camera pans down and we see her character is wearing ruby slippers. So she got them them in the end!
I realized when I saw a lot of younger viewers like yourself having not seen this movie that it made sense- my generation had it shown every year on TV and it was a big event. So since the age of two, this has been my favorite movie, because it was on TV - but younger generations with VCRs, streaming, Disney Channel, etc it's not really part of the culture. My mom read all of the OZ books to me when I was a child, and I read them to my kids (hoping to start reading them to my grandson) If you read about this film, it's astonishing that it was ever completed with all of the technical difficulties, injuries to actors, and musical chairs directors. But as a work of 'art' musically and special effects wise it's an incredible achievement.
The key to figuring out which real-world character played in Oz is in what they said before her journey began. The skinny farmhand said 'you'd think you didn't have any brains'. Another one said 'they're gonna erect a statue to me'. The other one said 'all you need is a little courage'. And of course, Professor Marvel easily represented the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy also called Mrs. Gulch 'you wicked old witch'.
Back in the day, one of the big three tv networks would show this once a year. The first rew times I watched, it was on our black-and-white tv. When the next-door neighbors got a color tv, I got to go there to watch and it was Amazing to this child's eyes!!
I use that line all the time, along with "you have no power here, and such a smell of sulfur." Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people know the reference. Showing my age, l ol.
The flying monkeys really scared me as a child 😂 Now you need to see the absolute fever dream that is Return to Oz... which also scared me but I feel that fear was much more valid!
Interesting reaction how you knew stuff, but didn't know it was from this or where it fit in. Glad you finally got around to it and shared with us. My one complaint is that after having a wonderful adventure to empower Dorothy and let her experience unconditional support from friends, she ended up back where she started, and with an adventure-crushing outlook of complacency and resignation of never leaving again.
Genuinely it was one of those situations of seeing something kind of out of context? Like I knew about the tornado and the land of Oz and of the characters but not the in between, not the adventure, not the castle, not the filling and the plot, yknow what I mean? Everything I knew was from just knowledge of out of context things, mostly from the internet.
Yes, I have the same thoughts about the ending. Wouldn't Dorothy go stir-crazy with boredom on a Kansas farm? and no doubt Miss Gulch would come back for Toto. But okay whatever.
After watching this, you must see "Wicked, The Musical." It shows a different aspect of who the witches were..... before Dorothy dropped in. Haha! The books by Gregory Maguire are amazing. Such a fun reaction video!!!!
As expected, I had to muffle all the music audio/not include the majority of it due to copyright reasons :( And also muffle some dialogue audio that had music behind it as well-- but just know I enjoyed all of the music, of course! Hope you all enjoy the reaction! :)
Hahahaha the struggle is real! Thank you for your hard word ❤
For completely understandable reasons, watching a RUclips reaction to a musical is a challenge... Although I enjoyed watching your amusement at discovering this classic, I find myself missing the music and the songs I've known since I was old enough to watch this in the mid-'60s. So, you'll excuse me if I'm off to see a reactor who can sing!
Kidding! This was fun, thanks Sam! ;-]
The older one gets, I think the harder the end of the film gets. Because it starts to remind you of your life. Family, friends...the first time seeing this.
This is one of those films where I watch it and I start missing Family that has since passed away.
I do love your reactions to things. I realized that, part of why I do love watching you react to movies....is you remind me a little of Rosie O'Donnell. (This is a good thing).
Meaning...you have that sassy New Yorker thing, but it also feels like a best friend cuddled up on the couch watching a film with you. Just The type of weekend where one needs it like...this week. Most of us are in weather so cold it is going to make things freeze off and fall off if we aren't careful. So...a weekend with some movies, a BFF and some popcorn and it is just a perfect time.
Rosie O'Donnell has always struck me as the type of person you could ask to do something like that and she would say yes. You have it as well. It is a good quality. 🤗
This may be the greatest movie ever created. Possibly. It was great watching you watch it.
@@GaryTongue-to3pw No… I DID have to. You genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. Other RUclipsrs also do not include music because of COPYRIGHT. We will physically have our videos BLOCKED by RUclips if we include copyrighted content that we do not mute or muffle, especially audio. I’ve been doing this for years so please be aware I know what I’m doing. Hell, the first time I uploaded this, I had to fix and reupload it because I had to take out a part of it BECAUSE RUclips caught some song that I thought was just dialogue but WAS apart of a song, and my video was blocked. I HAD to not include the music. Please do not be rude and come at me for something you clearly are wrong about. Thank you.
My grandmother was born in 1914, and was old enough to have seen this in theatres. She told me that it was a special treat to go to a movie with her father in Pittsburgh as a father-daughter trip between his work, and this was one movie they saw on a rare day out! She described it along these lines: "Oh, I remember a big flash of colour, like nothing we'd seen yet, not before then. It was like sticking your head in a bucket of water and coming back up for air and seeing a whole new world, like you took a breath in and thought you might taste candy in your mouth because of all the colours! And the sound, the music I remember the heels of our shoes hitting the floor, made a sound like everyone was tap dancing on those old floors. But the colour, nothing in the world was like it. The colour itself was a personality, it made the fantastical really fantastic. Like your eyes couldn't perceive colour like that, and suddenly they could."
And she also said: "In that tornado, we were scared for that girl's life!" lol! :)
And this kind of three-strip technicolor had already been around for a few years. But seeing it right after 15 minutes of sepiatone, revealed within the same shot, must have been insane.
That's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing it with us 😌
I love this!
@@RmlohnerIt had been around, but I can imagine lots of people had not seen it yet, as the majority of films back then were still shot in B&W. I can imagine it was a big shock to the senses when Oz came into view. I bet it seemed like the brightest color ever!🤣
In 1998, for a Wizard of Oz listing on TCM, writer Rick Polito wrote, "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
Yep. This movie is starring 4 men with inferiority complexes and 3 women fighting over shoes.
@@GaryTongue-to3pwlighten up. It's funny.
🤣🤣🤣 Dorothy is part of a deep cover, CIA team, doing some wet work in Oz!
I am pretty sure "to kill again" was actually "to kill the woman's sister for personal gain"
Or A movie about two women who fight over a pair of shoes.
It's kind of interesting how the "gifts" the wizard gives Dorothy's companions are basically external validation of qualities they had.
You know, I've seen this movie so many times throughout the years and I never looked at it from that perspective before. This is why I love scrolling the youtube comments.
I don't know if you noticed, but the scarecrow was the one coming up with all the ideas, and the tin man kept rusting because he was so sentimental. And the lion faced the witch in spite of his fears.
Fun fact: Margaret Hamilton was always moved to tears when watching the scene where the Wizard gives out his gifts to the protagonists (diploma, medal, clock, etc.) because, according to her, Frank Morgan was just as generous and kind in real life.
So sweet 😊😊
71-yr-old great grandma here... this is one of my favorite movies of all time...
watched it many times...
I can categorically state that this is the first time I have heard the wicked witch referred to as a ho-bag. 🤭
Hehehe 😁
Gotta keep folks on their toes!
I was born in 1990 and i was OBSESSED with this movie as a small child.
A lot of this movie was designed as basically a magic show with then-cutting edge special effects, and the big jaw-dropper was the change from black and white to color. This wasn't the first movie to feature both, but the change occurring within a single shot blew people's minds and still is perfectly convincing. That early part of the shot with Dorothy opening the door isn't Judy Garland but another girl wearing a copy of her dress that was actually black and white, and then she backs out of the shot for Judy to come in.
Unfortunately, one effect that didn't work out so well is the Witch's disappearance in a fireball at the end of her first scene. It was the first take and more of a proof of concept for the effect, so they weren't especially worried about hiding the trapdoor she disappears down. But Margaret Hamilton suffered burns on her arms from the pyrotechnics and understandably refused to do it again, so they were forced to put that shot in the finished film.
They way they did the tornado was cool, too. It was a tube of muslin in a track.
Additionally, Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies TV series, if anyone here is old enough to remember that!) was initially cast for and started filming as the Tin Man, but he had a terrible allergic reaction to the makeup (terrible as in hospitalized and then out of commission for some time recovering) and had to be replaced last minute.
@@bettrhalf8006 He never fully recovered either, and was understandably bitter that the movie became so universally beloved.
@@bettrhalf8006 Yeah, the entire production was plagued with such problems. It's a wonder it was ever finished.
Edit: I remember the Beverly Hillbillies! Mainly because my family watched a *lot* of Nick at Night when I was a kid.
Interesting fact: the body double for Judy Garland in that transition scene is 104 and still alive as of this post.
You didn't grow up when there were only 3 TV stations and maybe a 4th one with PBS. Once every year this movie was shown on broadcast television. It was a nice surprise to watch this after we finally got a color TV. The Wizard of Oz became part of our culture - and you found the source of so many things. I love this movie!!!
Trivia for when the film goes into color. That specific shot was filmed with color film. So to make that shot work they had to have all the inside of the house painted to look sepia toned. When Dorothy opens the door she's sepia toned too. So they had to have a double for Dorothy dressed and made up sepia toned. She opens the door to Oz, steps out of frame, and then Judy Garland dressed and made up for color film steps into the shot to walk into Oz.
Facts I didn’t know.
It’s hard to explain just how important this movie was to American kids born between 1950 and 1980. In the pre-VCR and pre-streaming days The Wizard of Oz was aired annually on national television first on CBS (1956-1967) then on NBC (1968-1975) and then back to CBS (1976-1998). The movie’s popularity on television started to wane in the ‘90s due to the movie’s ready access on home video and the splintering of TV audiences with the rise of cable. But throughout the late ‘50s and well into the ‘80s those annual broadcasts were big events. Usually discussed at length at school before and after the broadcast.
Absolutely! I was a kid in the 70s, and watched this every time it was on TV. ❤
The point that people can hardly grasp today is that before VCRs, you had ONE chance to see this movie during a particular two-hour time slot every year, and if you missed it, you wouldn't have another chance for an entire year. And if you saw it and loved it, and wanted to see it again, you also wouldn't have another chance for a whole year.
I remember that every time this on (which was like once a year) my sister and I would run home after evening services at church, which was thankfully right next door.
Same in Canada. We watched it once a year, and I think it was on in December.
Yes! It was an event just as exciting as Christmas and birthdays. That's why I still count it as my favorite movie even though i've seen it ten gazillion times.
1974 - second grade a classmate in "show and tell" showed us several black and white photos of behind the scenes from The Wizard of Oz, her grandmother was Margaret Hamilton (Witch of the West). As an 8 yr old i was in awe.
;-).
What amazes me is that the effects hold up very well all these years later. The sets, costumes, music, choreography and cinematography are all just amazing.
A point that many miss is that the scarecrow hardly makes a misstatement through the whole movie but as soon as he has his diploma he botches the Pythagorean theorem.
It could have just been a mistake in the script
Mistake or not, it is part of the movie.@@DAMIENDMILLS
My guess is that it was deliberate.
The joke is intentional: Having a diploma doesn't actually make you smart.
@riada4996 it also goes along with what he said in the beginning about how "some people without a brain do an awful lot of talking".
The three actors portraying Dorothy's companions (Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr) were all veteran song-and-dance men of the stage in the last years of Burlesque. This made them perfectly suited to bring these characters to life. Their highly stylized physical performances would be hard to duplicate today. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Did you mean to refer to Vaudeville?
In the book, the reason Glinda doesn’t tell Dorothy how to get home right away is because they don’t meet until the penultimate chapter. The movie condensed the two good witches into one character. The basic story is still relatively faithful to the plot of the novel, but the filmmakers made quite a few changes. Maybe the biggest difference is that in the books, Oz is real and not a dream. In fact, by the sixth book, Dorothy moves there permanently with her aunt and uncle.
I recently read the first book to my grandsons, who were 6 and 4 at the time. They were mesmerized.
The movie is a classic in its own right; but I will say that book does a better job of making it clear that each of the three friends *_already has_* the quality they are looking for. Throughout the film we DO see the Scarecrow thinking, but the only example of courage we see from the Lion is from his counterpart in Kansas (when he rescues Dorothy from the pigs); and the Tin Man only cries a lot, without showing any more tangible evidence of actually _caring._
- also, if this were Hogwarts, the Lion would be Gryffindor, the Scarecrow would be Ravenclaw, the Tin Man would be Hufflepuff…so does that mean then that Dorothy would be Slytherin?
Yes, the Witch of the North is her own character and Glinda is the Witch of the South. The Witch of the North knew the shoes (which were silver) were magic, but not what they would do. They only find out when they go to the South to see Glinda, who tells Dorothy the shoes can take her home. As it is, Dorothy gets home, but as she flies across the desert, she loses the shoes. It wasn't a dream in the book. In fact, they're rebuilding the house when Dorothy gets home and Auntie Em asks where she was all that time.
If you're wondering about the Witch's line about sending an "insect" after Dorothy which never gets a payoff, it's talking about a "Jitterbug" whose entire scene was cut for slowing down the third act too much. And this worked out very well, as removing this obvious reference to a major popular dance from the late 1930s left nothing in the film specifically tying it to the time it was made, which has allowed every generation of kids since to enjoy it without having to ask any questions about what something means.
Nice fact
In the 60’s when I was a young whippersnapper, this movie was on TV every spring, so there is a generation of us who watched and loved this movie.
Now just appreciate that you may be the only person on Earth who went into this movie already knowing Frank Morgan from another role.
Frank Morgan played Professor Marvel, the Emerald City Doorman, The Horse of a Different Color Driver, the Security Doorman for OZ and the Wizard of OZ himself.
@@tommiller4895you can say that he is Frank "Oz" now just imagine a Muppets version of Wizard of Oz with Frank Oz as OZ. Allthou in a twisted way the scene in spaceballs emulating the wizard of Oz and they meet yoghurt the Yoda substitute and Yoda being voiced by Frank Oz is kinda the Muppets version of WoO
Except the original audience, of course. Frank Morgan was a popular, familiar face at the time. He was in 50 films through the 1930s alone.
just so everybody knows..... Frank Morgan was not related to Henry Morgan (M*A*S*H) or Morgan Freeman.
@@GaryTongue-to3pw He was seen on this channel just last month in The Shop Around the Corner.
This movie only came on television during the holidays when I was a child. I would get so scared of the flying monkeys...and also got bored during the black and white segments. Then I watched it as an adult and absolutely blubbered at the end. My favorite sequences are Munchkinland, The Tin Man's song & dance, and the chorus as the four run out of the poppy field and up to the Emerald City: "You're out of the woods, you're out of the dark, you're out of the night...step into the sun, step into the light."
I had to hide my eyes for the witch’s arrival
The official title of that chorus is "Optimistic Voices."
Such ethereal feminine choruses are one reason I gravitate to 30's movies (Art Deco interior decorating being another). 😎
This is a movie that only ever gets better the more you see it.
My mother saw this in the theater in 1939. She was 16. She said the scene where the door opens and changes to color blew everyone’s minds. Color was around but not used much. Such a grand transition. A piece of cinematic history. Awesome reaction. Always a favorite!!!!
I heard it ended up being a flop, eventually.
My mom too! This was her first color movie and she was just so amazed when the door opened! She was 13 or 14 years old. I think she saw Gone With The Wind 10 years later even though it was released in 1939 as well.
When she opens the door to Oz, that is probably my favorite vignette of all time.
Imagine how amazing the transition from sepia to color was for cinema goers in 1939.
I’m sure everyone freaked out!
To answer your question, Yes, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion and the farmhands are the same people. There's even a bit of foreshadowing as to which farmhand is which character: One of them accuses Dorothy of having no brains- He becomes the Scarecrow. One of them talks about them erecting a statue in his honor- He becomes the Tin Man, and the other one almost has a heart attack when Dorothy falls into the pig trough and they tease him about losing his courage- He becomes the Cowardly Lion Also, Professor Marvel, the Driver of the Horse of a Different Color; the Doorman; the Wizard's Guard and the Wizard were all played by the same actor.
Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West was working at a children's daycare when she was offered the part. She and Judy Garland, who played Dorothy were very close friends, and Garland said she had trouble being afraid of Hamilton because she was so nice in real life. Hamilton said the scene where she forced Dorothy, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry to hand over Toto so she could have him destroyed was the hardest scene for her to do because she was such an animal lover in real life.
Margaret Hamilton once appeared on an episode of Mister Roger's Neighborhood to show children that she wasn't mean in real life, that she was just pretending. She even put on the witch's costume, without the green makeup of course, to show that it was all just make believe.
Yes, the three farmhands were the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. Not only that Miss Gulch was also the Wicked Witch of the West, and Professor Marvel was the Doorman of the Emerald City, the Cabbie, the guard outside the Wizards castle, and one other important character.. In a deleted scene Glinda was (back in Kanas) a friendly, chatty neighbor of Dorothy.
The witches' guard are chanting 'Oh we loath the Old One.' As they march into the castle. No they didn't like her much. Love your reaction.
I thought they were looking for "Oreos, and Ho-Hos" 😂
I think these chanted lines are meant to evoke something similar to the "Ey, ukhnyem!" chant in the traditional Russian "Song of the Volga Boatmen." There, it literally means, "Yo, heave ho!" The Winkies aren't engaged in a physical task, so it doesn't have that precise meaning. Rather, it's a marching song. But their uniforms do look rather Russian.
What??? Who told you that??!?
I had a Spanish teacher once claim that they were saying "Oigo" (I hear).
If you google for it you will find several interpretations and mine is among them. I heard it from Rush Limbaugh, years before the great man passed. @@Heroshii15
Fun fact: they almost left somewhere over the rainbow on the cutting room floor. Good thing they didn't considering it became the most beloved songs of the whole movie.
The "Snow" which broke the Poppy's spell was actually Cancer causing Asbestos which covered the poor Actors. The Tin Man's Silver Makeup and the Witch's Green Makeuo was Toxic and would be banned today. Another Actor started playing the role of the Tin Man (Buddy Ebsen aka Jed Clampett) but he was severely allergic to the Silver Makeup and had to be replace by Actor Jack Haley. The Witch's Green Makeup actually caught on fire in the Emerald City scene and severly burned poor Margaret Hamilton's hands and face.
And they turned Judi Garland into a drug addict
"And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much YOU love; but by how much you are loved by others."
Fun Fact: Judy Garland found it difficult to be afraid of Margaret Hamilton, because she was such a nice lady off-camera.
Horse Colors Fact: The horses in Emerald City palace were colored with Jell-O crystals. The relevant scenes had to be shot quickly, before the horses started to lick it off.
Music Enthusiast Fact: Over the Rainbow (1939) was nearly cut from the film; MGM felt that it made the Kansas sequence too long, as well as being too far over the heads of the children for whom it was intended. The studio also thought that it was degrading for Judy Garland to sing in a barnyard.
Sky Effect Fact: The famous "Surrender Dorothy" sky writing scene was done using a tank of water and a tiny model which was attached to the end of a long hypodermic needle. The syringe was filled with milk, the tip of the needle was put into the tank and the words were written in reverse while being filmed from below.
Found Treasure Fact: When the wardrobe department was looking for a coat for Frank Morgan (Prof. Marvel / The Wizard), it decided it wanted one that looked like it had once been elegant but was a little tattered. They visited a second-hand store and purchased an entire rack of coats, from which Morgan, the head of the wardrobe department and director Victor Fleming chose one they felt gave off the perfect appearance of shabby gentility. One day, while he was on set in the coat, Morgan idly turned out one of the pockets and discovered a label indicating that the coat had been made for L. Frank Baum. Mary Mayer, a unit publicist for the film, contacted the tailor and Baum's widow, who both verified that the coat had at one time been owned by the author of the original Wizard Of Oz books. After the filming was completed, the coat was presented to Mrs. Baum.
I love that quote so much.
@@rainbowpegacornstudios Interesting. I despise that quote. I get what Baum was trying to say. But there are many people in this world with an enormous heart, a great capacity for love, who are alone, or who are unappreciated by others. Not everyone who loves well is loved well in return. Some of the most giving people are taken for granted and some of the most selfish, heartless people are totally adored. I believe if we judge someone’s heart, it should be based on how much love they give, not how much they receive in return. Sigh.
@@dandyfluff I liked his other quote better: "Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."
@@flarrfan Yes. And the Tin Man’s reply: “I still want one.” Practical or not, we all want to love and be loved.
What about the fact that Ms Gulch was probably killed in that tornado since DOrothy was so happy to be home at the end , " no place like home" but the order to kill Toto was still active unless the tornado actually KILLED Ms. Gulch!
Dorothy must have gotten a sixth sense in her dream melting the witch, sensing that Gulch was killed in the tornado.
This would come on TV every year and my brother and I grew up on it. We looked forward to this and The Sound of Music every year.
I keep thinking, even when she wakes up from her dream, she is still going to have the problem of Toto being wanted by the Sherrif!
The big famous Judy Garland film besides this one is Meet Me in St. Louis, with her song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
And a close runner-up is the 1954 version of A Star is Born, with the song The Man That Got Away.
"Somebody's pulling my tail."
One of my favorite lines from any movie. Quotable whenever someone is complaining about a problem they've caused for themselves. 🙃
Ya did it yaself!
to be a movie from 85 years ago, it holds up pretty damn good!
The iconic scene of fireworks when the witch reached for the shoes became the cover of a classic ELO album. Eternal pop culture!
Yes, this is one of those films that's important for cultural literacy. Good catch that poppies only have an effect on the 2 biological characters. And, yes, as others are noting, to this day I still refer to stimulants as Judy Garland pills.
I hope this means we'll get around to The Wiz at some point! I love that version of this story!
With diana ross and Michael Jackson
The Wiz is so amazing!
This movie was such a big deal that people were still referencing it in movies *regularly* in the '80s. They used to air this annually on one of the broadcast TV networks, before everyone had cable, and I remember taping it off TV on VHS as a kindergartner circa '85. If you go back and re-watch Spaceballs, you may discover that Mel Brooks referenced it in more scenes than you thought!
The film was based on a series of books by L Frank Baum, but in the books Oz is a real place that Dorothy goes back to multiple times in her life, and a lot of the travels and events of the first book are omitted for time. (Thus creating the Glinda loophole: the Good Witches of the North and South were originally two separate people, and Dorothy doesn't meet Glinda of the South, who knows how the shoes work, until the end of the book. The Good Witch of the North wasn't named in the first book, but Locasta and Addaperle are two of the names she's been given over the years by different creators.)
As far as other works adapted from the books: in addition to Return to Oz, which I have not seen personally but which traumatized *many* others of my age, you might someday want to check out The Wiz. The Wiz is a pair of adaptations (first a Broadway play, then a film) both made in the '70s with all-Black casts. The Wiz (play) is from what I understand a reasonably faithful musical adaptation of the book (moreso than *this* film) but with Black characters. The Wiz (film) changed the story up even more than this film, so that they could cast the very-not-a-teenager Diana Ross as Dorothy, turning her into a shy Harlem kindergarten teacher and turning Oz into a dark urban fantasy New York. The film... drags in a few places... but I absolutely loved the sheer creative terror of the visuals, which are straight out of a kid's nightmares, and the music (almost all of it retained from the play) was fantastic all-around. Mabel King's performance as Wicked Witch of the West is to die for; her "I want" song is up there with Ursula's "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from The Little Mermaid a decade and change later.
And people often leave out the fact that in the book, the slippers are SILVER, not ruby. But of course silver would not have been as dramatic as the ruby red slippers. A pair of those red slippers are on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
The line " I'll miss you most of all" is from a cut idea that Dorothy and the farm hand that plays the scarecrow were going to have a budding romance but was cut because they were trying to make her look younger
I’m glad they cut that, not only because of her age but also because this movie didn’t need nor would benefit from a romance element.
Girly, i dont know what your source is but i haven't find any proof of this. The book doesn't have any reference to it. And there was a scene in the scrip where in the final scenes when she wakes up she realizes that he is going to college and he makes her promise that she will write to him, signaling that i the future that could happend. But there was not a romances cut from the original scritp, thats totally different
OGB: Well, everyone got what they needed, or they had it all along.
As the musical group America once said, Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man, that he didn't already have 😄
'Somewhere over the Rainbow' won the Oscar for Best Original Song... Mrs. Gluch/the Wicked Witch- Actress Margaret Hamilton SHOULD have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress- one of \THE most iconic roles/performances in film history.
Another movie that has many social and cultural references is Casablanca. If you haven’t seen that you no doubt will enjoy that iconic movie. One of the classics!
Fun fact: During "If I Only Had A Heart", the line "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" is actually Adriana Caselotti, who voiced Snow White a couple of years prior to this movie.
*FUN FACTS*
the coat that professor Marvel is wearing when Dorothy meets him is actually L. Frank Baum's coat.
The actress who played the wicked witch was formerly an elementary school teacher
She also made an appearance on Sesame Street and Mr Rogers Neighborhood years later
There was a horrible accident during scene when the witch disappears after leaving Munchkin land
She was supposed to drop through a trap door and the pyrotechnics went off too early and the actress was horribly burned and was in the hospital recording for several months
Upon her return to the set the first thing they wanted her to do was ride the broomstick which spelled out "Surrender Dorothy"
She refused and so they got her stunt double to do it instead and there was a technical malfunction and the broomstick exploded
I love this movie so much, and I love seeing people watch it for the first time even more! I'm so excited to watch it in theatres soon with it's anniversary event going on.
You picked a winner, Sam! 29:32 R2D2 was patterned after Toto, always getting his friends out of trouble.
Toto was a girl. Didn’t want dangling
I really don't understand how it's possible for someone to have not seen this but you are not alone. You are the second or third RUclipsr who has reacted to this, that I've seen, who is seeing it for the first time. In my entire life, I have only met one person who has not seen this and she was from Moscow and grew up behind the iron curtain. There are so many movies though. Everyone has something they haven't seen. That's part of the fun.
The actress who played the Witch, Margaret Hamilton, got badly burned in the fireball where she disappears from Munchkin land.
Also, for decades, there was a rumor that one of the Munchkin actors hung themselves on the set, and no one noticed until after filming and you can see the body somewhere in the background in the movie, but it’s completely bogus (as far as I know).
It's in the shot of the group walking down the road after meeting the Tin Man. I have no idea how anyone thought it's a guy hanging himself; it's so clearly a bird spreading its wings.
@@Rmlohner For years I thought it was a horse bending its head down to eat. (And I saw it in a theater!)
The rumor came from the low-resolution version seen on early tv's. But it is completely bogus - those aren't real trees in the background that would support anyone's weight. These were closed sets and the Munchkins would not have been on the set. There are tons of other people, anyone of whom would have noticed something like this happening.
Hamilton didn't get burned on this take - they had this one and decided to do it one more time for backup. The stage hands rushed to wipe her burned skin with rubbing alcohol because the green makeup contained poisonous copper, so they had to get it off right away. (Her double got burned on the skywriting scene when the broom blew up. And the snow was asbestos.)
Yes, the hanging Munchkin rumor is total nonsense. It’s been debunked many times, but some people still refuse to accept that it isn’t true, annoyingly.
The actress who plays Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West was actually very kind. Of course, she was an actress. Incredible actress. She only passed away in 1985 and was working pretty much until the end. She is in a well known coffee commercial from the 80’s that’s on RUclips. Her name is Margaret Hamilton.
Don’t forget that one episode of Sesame Street.
It’s bittersweet when I find adults who love movies like you who hv never seen this one!
So glad you got to it! 😊😊❤
Marvel, the doorman, carriage driver, guard, Oz were all the same actor
Dorothy's pig tails change from long to short several times throughout the movie. This movie was on every year when I was growing up. I'm 69 & still love it. The Cowardly Lion was always my favorite character. When I was a kid, I thought the witches soldiers were singing "Oreo's. Yum yum! Oreo's. Yum yum!" I really enjoyed rewatching it with you. Thanks for the memory.
Growing up, the wizard of Oz was a very big thing in our house. They played it on TV ever so often and we got so excited when we got off the bus and mom said the wizard of Oz is coming on tv tonight
I grew up watching "Wizard of Oz." They broadcast it on television one Sunday evening every year. It was fun as hell watching it fresh again vicariously through your eyes as an adult. It brought back all the magic. Thanks for your reaction!
In the days of network TV, this was an annual tradition. Everyone who watched TV, grew up seeing this annually. It is strange that so many have not seen it. Welcome to the club!
This is such a great classic. I remember when I was younger I would spend weekends at my cousins house and we'd camp out in the living room watching this movie on repeat every time I visited lol.
I grew up in Kansas, so it's like an unwritten law that you have to have seen this movie. When I was a kid, this was shown once a year with no advertisement breaks (This was the era before VCRs), so I had seen it multiple times before I was 7. I am floored that someone your age hasn't seen it yet.
Odd copyright note: While the Wicked Witch has been allowed to appear in several other stories, they're not allowed to color her the same shade of green that she is here. Which is why she looks so off in stuff like Once Upon a Time and Oz: The Great and Powerful.
That’s because the Wicked Witch is in the public domain, but the MGM version of her isn’t.
I've been watching this movie since I was a kid(I'm 38 now). I still absolutely love it!
This might be the most quoted movie of all time. 11 more years until it hits public domain. The actress who played the wicked witch was actually once a kindergarten teacher. Not too long ago they found a lost episode of Sesame Street where she made an appearance as the witch which she did many years after this. It was the most sought after lost episode of Sesame Street
So much fun! Obviously a kids' movie, but better late than never! Congratulations on scratching this off your list!
Great reaction! I'd love to see you react to The Wiz. It's The Wizard of Oz, but different. There are some significant differences between the two films, but overall it's Dorothy's journey with her friends to see the Wizard
I always thought it was so crazy that the “snow” that falls over the Poppy field to break the spell, was asbestos! ❄️
“I’m the only one that knows how to use them. They’re of no use to you.” That requires a process known as learning.
Saw this for the first time on tv as a kid in the early 60s. When the ruby slippers vanished and those striped feet and legs curled up I was totally freaked. I can remember having a nightmare about the witch and the flying monkeys.
The movie may be magical but production was nightmarish for young Judy Garland. in those days the studios essentially OWNED you if you were under contract and it was especially bad for younger actors. They starved her to keep her "perfect figure" and offered a steady supply of pills to keep working around the clock.
I've heard :( So sad and unnecessary
Man, remember how terrifying the wicked witch was as a child? 😆
Oh god yeah ! ‘ I’ll get you my pretty and your dog too” ahhhhh
I was impressed by how quickly you predicted the farm characters would be characters in Oz. Then you forgot about it, but it came back to you. Good catch!
I'm delighted by you knowing the music just through osmosis of living in society! It's so cool how this movie and it's sounds are such a baseline in our culture. Like the Wicked Witch theme is an *instant* "this is a bad guy" give away!
In the book the ruby slippers were silver. They tried that for the movie but they didn't stand out so they made them pop with color being ruby slippers. And also Dorothy did go to the land of Oz. They made it into it being a dream for the movie for various reasons. There's a lot of behind the scenes details. Not all of them are good. They gave her drugs to keep her awake long and had her on an all liquid diet to slim her even though she was slim.
The original message in the sky was “Surrender Dorothy Or Die.” It was shortened because of concerns that message would scare kids.
If you ask me, shortening the message was a half measure. If they didn’t want to scare kids, cut the entire scene. I’m happy it exists as is, but it is still such a dark scene, they should have gone all the way. They scared kids with that scene, anyway.
When I was a little kid in the 60's, "The Wizard Of Oz" was shown on TV every year, once a year in about January. My mom made sure we got to see it, but the Wicked Witch of The West used to scare the hell out of me, especially when she was on the roof of the house, and then with her flying monkeys. Shudder. As I aged I got over it, but still enjoyed it a lot. Now you can watch "TWOO" with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" as the backing track, and it works very well. Someone figured it out, and now two of my favorite bits of media can be seen and heard as one. Glad you enjoyed it.
In the book the Emerald City is called that because everyone there and everyone entering are required to wear green tinted glasses.
Judy Garland laughed her butt off when she first saw the cowardly lion actor in costume.. Had to do several takes. Good reaction.
I've been watching this movie since the early 60s when it was being shown on network TV once a year. The winged monkeys didn't bother me, and neither did the witch. The tornado, however, scared me to death. To this day in my 60s tornadoes still terrify me, although I'm better than I used to be.
It's actually a giant pantyhose!
Do you have tornadoes in the area you live in? I've never seen one, but there was a localised tornado one afternoon when I was about sixteen. It was about five minutes' drive away from my school, so I was relatively close but blissfully unaware as I was sitting in Media Studies class, writing about horror movie conventions (one of the exams was a genre study and our teacher chose horror as our genre, although we were given the option to skip the scariest one and we had none of the 80s slasher movies, even though they are integral to the horror genre).
@@strawberrysoulforever8336 We do. They've been close but I've never actually seen one. The closest I've been to one is probably from the mid-60s around the first time I saw TWoO, when one hit the south side of the city I was living in at the time. We were living in the center of the city, probably about 5 miles north of where it hit. It ripped the roofs off of a couple of stores and restaurants we used to go to. I do remember incredibly strong winds at that time blowing stuff down the street. At about the same time another tornado destroyed a big chunk of a town about 10 miles away to the south, and my Dad decided to drive us all down there a few days later to take a look. It was horrible. Those events plus seeing TWoO probably scarred me for life. 🙀🙀🙀
I was born in 90, but was OBSESSED with this movie as a kid. I still have an illogical fear of tornadoes, but i loved the Witch and her Guards. I pretended i was a Guard as a kid 😅
Back in the 60's when I was just a little kid, this was so scary, and we looked forward to seeing it every year! The witch with the fire on the roof....Oz bellowing and poor lion jumping out of the window (that's where the commercial break came!) It was magical. Now it might seem a little lame but it was a delight way back when. (And one of our favorite quotes, "I'm melting, I'm melting" and of course, "There's no place like home!))
And there’s the book / musical called Wicked, telling you the story from the point of view of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West… she and Glinda where roomies in the magic university! The song “Defying Gravity” from the musical is a real showstopper.
The Witch never scared me - but the tornado did! Yikes!
That look you gave the camera at 35:41 made me snort so hard. Then I laughed out loud so hard I sounded like an epileptic sea lion.
In the first book, they have to wear glasses to "protect" their eyes from the Emerald City's brightness, but these are really just to make everything appear green.
This is the first film I actually have memories of seeing at the cinema, not when it first came out(!) but a re-run in the sixties.
“There’s no place like Home. There’s no place like Home.” Oh, how I long to get there.
This movie was on TV every year during the 60s and 70s, so many of us from that era have seen it multiple times. When I was little my family only had a black and white TV so that reveal when she lands in Munchkin Land didn’t show up on my screen. After I had seen it several times, I was over at my great aunts house, who did have a color TV and I was scared to death of the green wicked witch! I remember hiding behind my great uncle’s recliner when she was on the screen, lol.
You caught on immediately that Dorothy‘s journey was a dream that happened after she got conked out in the storm. Obviously, as a child, I didn’t make the connection that fast. I was convinced that she really did travel via the tornado to Oz! So, when reality finally leaked in, & I understood that it was a dream, I was very resistant to it. I remember being quite upset that it wasn’t real!
As many times as I’ve seen this movie, watching it with you today was the first time that it occurred to me that while Dorothy was glad to be home, she still faced the issue of Miss Gulch trying to get her dog destroyed. What ever happened with that? 🤷♀️😄
With any luck, she got swept away by the tornado!
Miss Gulch's backstory, subsequent life, and her deleted number from *The Wizard of Oz* are all revealed in Fred Barton's one-man musical, *Miss Gulch Returns!* (1984).
I've always wondered about the water killing the witch. I think I've come up with something. It wasn't just because it was water, it was a combination Dorothy had the ruby slippers on and was using the water to save the scarecrow. So in essence her goodness was in the water empowered by the slippers. Sounds far fatched but best I can think of.
I like your theory.
In the book it was because she was so old that the blood in her had dried up years before...so she was essentially a walking pile of dust.
@@davidfox5383David Fox! A veritable expert on everything WOO. How ya doin' buddy? Bonnie in Denver.
@@BonniBarlow-fn6oj Hi Bonnie! Not surprised to find you here....I love Sam's reactions and have been looking forward to this one!
@davidfox5383 but the only problem with that, and the biggest issue people have always had with that scene is then why was the water there? Who would allow people who only worked for you out of fear have access to there greatest weakness on the daily just to keep her home clean? And by the looks of the place it wasn't exactly spotless, so why was the water there other then to use on the witch at that exact point in time? Everyone hated her and could easily killer her at any moment. So I will stand by my theory. If for no other reason then so it makes sense to me. It's bad enough that in the sequel the gnome king dies by chicken egg. At least we can say he was allergic or something. The big bads in OZ die way to easily for them to have gotten so big to be so bad in the lands of Oz.
“Good-Deed-Doers”
The word he’s searching for is *_Philanthropist._*
- he’s not _quite_ making it all up
The Greatest fantasy movie of all time!
They show this every Thanksgiving weekend on TNT and TBS as well as Cartoon Network TCM.
I remember watching this with my older sister and she thought The Cowardly Lion was an adorable character wanting a little courage.
Congrats on knocking this one off your Bucket List and giving you your Unified Field Theory of all the references you've known from other sources. The first 20 or 21 times I watched this was on a black-and-white TV, so seeing it in color at a college screening in the early 1980s was a revelation.
As a semi fun fact, Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli was married to Jack Haley's (Tin Man) son Jack Haley Jr for a bit.
To not know that Somewhere Over the Rainbow is from the Wizard of Oz, to my generation, is like saying you came from another planet, or have permanent amnesia...
This film is the epitome of a good G-rated film! When I was growing up, I had a neurologist who treated one of the original surviving actresses who played one of the Lullabye League munchkins from this movie!
In the play, Uncle Henry is the Wizard of Oz and Aunt Em is Glinda. There is no Professor Marvel, and the Jitterbug song is intact. I had the pleasure of designing the Jitterbug costumes for a local production.
I used to watch this film every year with my mom when I was growing up, as it used to air yearly on one of the three big commercial networks. It was a family tradition to sit down to enjoy this fantasy romp every year. My mom can do a very good impersonation of the Witch's voice. And would quote lines sometimes. I did read the novel this was based on when I was a kid and at least one of the other OZ books, of which there are many! The original actor cast as the Tin Woodsman, Buddy Ebson (Later famous on TV as Jed Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies") had a bad allergic reaction to the silver makeup and almost died. So he was replaced with Jack Haley. This movie, as you might have guessed, was filmed entirely on soundstages with no actual exterior shots so they could control the conditions. Late in Margaret Hamilton's career she appeared in the darkly comic film "Brewster McCloud" and the director threw in a little inside joke to Oz. In her final scene the camera pans down and we see her character is wearing ruby slippers. So she got them them in the end!
I realized when I saw a lot of younger viewers like yourself having not seen this movie that it made sense- my generation had it shown every year on TV and it was a big event. So since the age of two, this has been my favorite movie, because it was on TV - but younger generations with VCRs, streaming, Disney Channel, etc it's not really part of the culture. My mom read all of the OZ books to me when I was a child, and I read them to my kids (hoping to start reading them to my grandson) If you read about this film, it's astonishing that it was ever completed with all of the technical difficulties, injuries to actors, and musical chairs directors. But as a work of 'art' musically and special effects wise it's an incredible achievement.
"You green bean!" Literally LOL'd at that. 😂😂
Best fake tornado ever. Dorothy was a serial killer!
Chicks fighting over shoes.
The key to figuring out which real-world character played in Oz is in what they said before her journey began. The skinny farmhand said 'you'd think you didn't have any brains'. Another one said 'they're gonna erect a statue to me'. The other one said 'all you need is a little courage'. And of course, Professor Marvel easily represented the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy also called Mrs. Gulch 'you wicked old witch'.
I noticed that! Smart, foreshadowing dialogue
They used gelatin powder to change the horse of a different color's appearance. The horses kept licking it off and it needed to be reapplied a lot.
So glad to know it was an edible product and not something toxic for the horse! That’s pretty funny though 😂
Back in the day, one of the big three tv networks would show this once a year. The first rew times I watched, it was on our black-and-white tv. When the next-door neighbors got a color tv, I got to go there to watch and it was Amazing to this child's eyes!!
I didn't even know it was mostly in color until seeing a college screening in my 20s!
My all time favorite scene is when glenda says begone before someone drops a house on you and the witch looks up suddenly scared
I use that line all the time, along with "you have no power here, and such a smell of sulfur." Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people know the reference. Showing my age, l ol.
The flying monkeys really scared me as a child 😂
Now you need to see the absolute fever dream that is Return to Oz... which also scared me but I feel that fear was much more valid!
Interesting reaction how you knew stuff, but didn't know it was from this or where it fit in. Glad you finally got around to it and shared with us.
My one complaint is that after having a wonderful adventure to empower Dorothy and let her experience unconditional support from friends, she ended up back where she started, and with an adventure-crushing outlook of complacency and resignation of never leaving again.
Genuinely it was one of those situations of seeing something kind of out of context? Like I knew about the tornado and the land of Oz and of the characters but not the in between, not the adventure, not the castle, not the filling and the plot, yknow what I mean? Everything I knew was from just knowledge of out of context things, mostly from the internet.
Yes, I have the same thoughts about the ending. Wouldn't Dorothy go stir-crazy with boredom on a Kansas farm? and no doubt Miss Gulch would come back for Toto. But okay whatever.
After watching this, you must see "Wicked, The Musical." It shows a different aspect of who the witches were..... before Dorothy dropped in. Haha! The books by Gregory Maguire are amazing. Such a fun reaction video!!!!
Wicked is one of the best English language musicals period. Everyone should check it out.