Hey guys! I know most songs in the movie are cut out. It took 3 re-edits and over a month of copyright disputes to get it uploaded. Anything more than 3-4 seconds of music gets instantly copyrighted by the algorithm...
Margaret Hamilton was a lovely, gentle woman. She was so concerned about the way the Witch scared children that she eventually went on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, bringing along her costume, and demonstrated getting dressed, all the while talking about it so the kids watching could see the Witch was not a real person, but just a character for an actor.
Awww, that's really sweet of her! I always feel bad for actors who play iconically bad characters, they always seem to get a lot of hate mail or bad feeling; Mr.T's mother was really upset with him when he played Clubber Lang in Rocky III, because of the way the character disrespected Adrian.
I’m sure someone mentioned this, but when I was a kid, before VHS tapes and cable, this movie played on tv once a year, and it was an EVENT! Such a wonderful film…
It was a big event, once a year! Eventually watched it on a color tv. Which was somewhat primitive by today's standards. But still a magical movie for me in the early 60's.
It always played on Thanksgiving Day on CBS. It was an event and it is where the movie became a timeless classic. It did not do particularly well when it was originaly released, much like "It's a Wonderful Life".
Technicolor is actually an old technology that was invented in the silent era. It used a special camera with a beam splitter that divided the image into three beams that went through three colored filters: one red, one green, and one blue. The filtered images were focused onto three black and white film strips. When they made a print, they would use the black and white negatives to make a single color print using a complex dye transfer process. It was complicated and expensive, but it produced great results. One advantage of Technicolor is that the colors in the negatives don't fade, because they don't have any dyes in them (black and white doesn't fade over time the way color does). A side note: the original Technicolor process used only two negatives, one with a red filter and one with a green filter-the viewer's brain would fill in the blue color. I once saw the silent movie The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks that used the two-color Technicolor process, and I thought it worked pretty well. The tornado was achieved with a long, twisted piece of muslin cloth. Director Victor Fleming and the wardrobe department picked out a coat for actor Frank Morgan to wear as the Wizard. One day Morgan turned one of the pockets inside-out and discovered a label that said the coat had been made for L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books. They originally wanted to cast Shirley Temple as Dorothy. It would have been an entirely different movie. Temple was typecast as a cute little kid. Also, Garland was a much better singer than Temple. They originally cast Buddy Ebsen as The Tin Man, but he had to quit because he had an allergic reaction to the silver makeup, so they got Jack Haley instead. Ebsen is best known today as Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies. Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was a kind woman who loved children. It bothered her that children were afraid of her after this movie came out. Mr. Rogers once had her on his show so she could explain to children that it was all just make-believe, and that they shouldn't be afraid of witches. The actors who played the Munchkins were from Europe. Many were Jewish, and they stayed in the U.S. rather than return to Nazi Germany. The horses in Emerald City were colored with Jell-O mix. They had to shoot the scenes quickly before the horses licked it off. Margaret Hamilton was badly burned in one of the stunts in this movie, and she refused to do any more stunts like it for the rest of the filming. The "snow" in the poppy field was made from asbestos. Toto got $125 a week. The Munchkins each only got $50 a week. Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics to all the songs, and Harold Arlen wrote the music. Both wrote a large number of other songs, and wrote some together apart from Wizard of Oz, including It's Only a Paper Moon. They'd have worked more together, except that Harburg drove Arlen crazy with his political opinions. Harburg was a socialist. It's not that Arlen disagreed with Harburg, but that Harburg wouldn't shut up about it. Harburg also wrote: April in Paris Brother Can You Spare a Dime? Arlen is considered one of the all-time great American songwriters - some of his best are Accentuate the Positive Come Rain or Come Shine Get Happy I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) Stormy Weather That Old Black Magic. The song Over the Rainbow was almost cut from the movie. It's a slow number, and they thought the movie was too long. Fortunately, they left it in. Otherwise it would have been lost to history. In 2004 the American Film Institute ranked it #1 in their list of 100 Greatest Songs in American Films. It was also named The Song of the Century by the National Endowment for the Arts.
I still do miss the song The Jitterbug in the movie, the song they cut instead of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Yarburg did the lyrics to the 1950 Broadway musical Flahooley, it’s ‘ok’. Arlen wrote around 6 Broadway musicals, the best of which is 1954’s House of Flowers, with Pearl Bailey.
to answer your question, the entire movie was shot on sets, with certain exceptions location shooting was extremely rare in hollywood productions at this time, studios had entire large backlots where just about any location (from new york city to the old west to outer space) could be constructed, the union set designers and builders were some of the great craftspeople of the classic era
@@shmizzle99 It was actually a large gantry crane to which the muslin cloth and chicken wire tornado was attached at the top. The bottom of the tornado was attached to a smallish cart on a track and stagehands hidden just beneath the set would move the cart back and forth. So the top and bottom of the tornado could be moved independently while the chicken wire at the top enabled it to maintain its basic funnel--like shape.
Yes, a lot of the people involved in set construction were later used in WW2 to create camouflage for vehicles and also to build fake vehicles to deny the Axis useful intelligence.
The Wicked Witch was a real trooper in this film. For years, she would get asked to do conventions to scare kids, which she did. She was a kindergarten teacher and also was on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and explained (for kids) the difference between movies & real life. During the movie, she suffered first-degree burns on the right side of her face and second-degree burns on her right hand when she exits Munchkinland; the flames rose too soon, before she had descended below the stage.
The funniest "TV Guide"-style synopsis of The Wizard of Oz That I ever read: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
I will never get over just how realistic and frightening that twister is---to this day that entire sequence holds up, and the old school filming techniques really surpasses the quality of most modern depictions. Fantastic stuff!
5:00 The tornado in this movie was done by using chicken wire, a long stretched out legging, and a lot of dirt on the bottom spinning rapidly! Many meteorologist consider this tornado to be the most accurate portrayal of a tornado in cinema!
The scene of the house falling from the sky was shot by dropping a miniature house from a scaffold onto a floor painted to resemble the sky and running the film in reverse. The magic of practical effects are so much more interesting than C.G.I. will ever be.
@@ronaldjeffrey8712 The reason CGI is so unconvincing is that, no matter what they do, it's just a cartoon. Done with a machine instead of paint and brush, but still just a cartoon. That will never be as satisfying as watching a film where you keep asking yourself, "How did they DO that??"
@@Serai3 For me the most entertaining part of a film is figuring out how the practical effects are done. Sadly these days the answers is usually just some guy sitting at a keyboard.
Your observation of Professor Marvel and The Wizard was spot on. They were both played by the GREAT character actor Frank Morgan. What most people don't know is that he actually played 6 characters in this movie. 1)Professor Marvel, 2)The Doorman at the entrance to the Emerald City, 3)The Cabby that took them to get cleaned up, 4)The guard at the door leading to The Wizard, 5)The voice of the Fire Wizard, and 6)The Wizard himself. We lost him in 1949 and he never got to see the colorization version.
Technicolor ran three strips of film through the camera: a red strip, a blue strip, and a green strip. Each strip captured its own part of the visible spectrum. Then, in the lab, all three strips were printed down -- which is to say combined -- to a single reel of film that resulted in a full, true-color image. Technicolor was loved because of the incredible flexibility available in the lab to make color adjustments due to having each channel of color on a separate reel.
To add a bit of extra info to your fine explanation, technicolor was around a good while by the time WoO was made, existing even during the silent era. However, it was at first only "two-strip" technicolor, missing one of the three colors, I forget which. The goal was always to end up with "three-strip", but it took time to get there. Videos on "two-strip" / "two-color" technicolor, as well as the overall history of technicolor, can be found here at RUclips.
@@Decrepit_Productions And to REALLY bring it full circle -- and thank you for building on our impromptu history -- one of the first two-strip Technicolor movies was the original "A Star Is Born" with Frederic March! And I don't know about you, but I've always been glad they got to three-strip so quickly. Two-strip is pretty much the ugliest method for achieving "color" ever made. A necessary step, as you point out. But man, SO hideous looking, those pinks and greens!
A great documentary short (it can be found currently on RUclips) is "Jack Cardiff: Painting with Light"...Cardiff was the legendary cinematographer who worked on Powell & Pressburger's classic movies. His stories, such as getting selected to run Technicolor even though he had no background technical expertise with it and demonstrating how it worked are well worth watching!
To be specific, you are referring to film negatives. A prism was used to split filtered light to separate red, green, and blue images on each black and white negative. Since there was not color negative film at the time, the impressions on the black and white film were used in a dye transfer process to create the color.
An interesting piece of trivia is that when the costumers were looking for an old coat for the character of "Professor Marvel" they found one in a second hand shop and discovered a label inside that read "L. Frank Baum". The coat had originally belonged to the author of The Wizard Of Oz! Also, there is a story (possibly apocryphal) that when L. Frank Baum was writing the original story, he was couldn't think of a name for his magical land. Then he looked at his two-drawer filing cabinet: the top drawer was labeled A-N. The bottom drawer was labeled O-Z. Problem solved!
The likely reason that there was a coat belonging to Baum in the area was that he spent the last years of his life in the L.A. area - he had a small movie studio where the very first Oz movies were made (he wasn’t as good a filmmaker as he was a writer, unfortunately).
@@gerstelb Cool! I never realized that he ended up in California. Given that he died in 1919, it's amazing that the coat turned up in a second-hand store 20 years later, right when the costumer for Wizard of Oz was looking for an old-fashioned frock coat.
@6:43 i got really into the technicolor process last year and read a ton about it. Technicolor process had been around since about 1914 and was used on particular films from that point on. the acid colors they used are extremely stable and vibrant. even now decades later, technicolor prints are so sharp, high resolution, and vibrantly color accurate, that they are considered of archival quality, dating as far back as 1917!!! @10:57 It uses 3 separate exposed film negatives (cyan, magenta, and yellow - which are the negative colors of red, green and blue) filmed at the same time, and synced and pressed together during the process. Because the cameras were using 3 separate reels of film simultaneously, some technicolor cameras at the time could weight up to 500lbs!!! Edit: Just wanted to add that have gone back and watched a bunch of older technicolor films and comparing them to modern media - i can unequivocally say there is just no substitute for technicolor. In my mind it was and will be the undisputed king for color and clarity
The tornado was actually a large muslin stocking, stretching at a length of 35 feet. Muslin being the same material used for windsocks. The top of the stocking was attached to a gantry that gave it the spinning motion. The bottom was attracted to a rod that ran the length of the soundstage. A dustpan of a material called “Fullers Earth” was used to give off the cloud of dust. The rolling clouds were actually painted on two glass panels, and the effects supervisor moved the panels in alternating directions to give off the illusions. The shots where Dorothy hurries back to the farm and see the debris flying past her window was actually a rear projection (a large screen that projects the image of the twister sweeping the Kansas landscape). The shots of the house flying in the cyclone and then falling on the Witch of the East was actually a reverse shot of the miniature house falling down over a matte painting and clouds of dry ice vapor and dropping the prop off the top of the soundstage to make it look like the house is flying.
My great grandma is like 93, and she said when this movie first came out people in the theatres were gasping and they were awestruck at the part when Dorothy steps out of her house and into the land of Oz. It’s amazing that this movie is 83 years old and it still holds up today. The Wizard of Oz is such an amazing, magical, and timeless classic.
The wizard "throne room" scene is not composite. The head was projected onto the steam cloud and captured in camera. Inglorious Bastards paid homage to it in it's "burning cinema" scene.
Margaret Hamilton was Judy Garland's best friend on the set. JG was treated miserably by the cast and director. MH would bring her into her trailer and giver her tea and advice.
It broke my heart when I learned how Judy was treated 💔 especially being made to feel ugly and fat. And creating the beginning of her addiction to drugs 😭
After hearing about all the stuff that happened behind the scenes, it made me love and appreciate the movie so much more. Those actors/actresses went through a lot to give us this amazing masterpiece of a movie
@@Kainlarsen curious why do I think that? Judy loved this film and never blamed it for her troubles. Judy was pretty much an addict before this film was made. Whether she did the film or not her life still would have had the same trajectory imo. Mgm was hellbent on exploiting her talent, if anything I think this film probably was the only thing she really could look back on with a sense of pride, worthy of the pain she endured
For another gorgeous Technicolor film from a year earlier, you should watch The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, one of the best swashbucklers ever! It’s just loads of fun.
I second (or third) this suggestion!!! And if you decide that swashbucklers are your thing, Rouben Mammoulian's THE MARK OF ZORRO starring Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone is a great one! -- and speaking of Tyrone Power, the original NIGHTMARE ALLEY is a must if you also plan to watch the Del Toro remake.
Did you ever notice that the only character from Kansas who didn't have a counterpart in Oz was Uncle Henry? Even Auntie Em was there, in the crystal ball.
Back in the 1960s, one of the TV networks (CBS, I think) aired this movie annually as a special event, and people would huddle around the TV in awe. It was comparable to watching the Super Bowl today. That's why it such a beloved movie after so many years.
When the commercials advertising this would start playing a week or so in advance, it was SO exciting! My mom would let us kids eat in the living room on TV trays the night it came on! It was a big TV & family event!
You could go back even further to 1934's "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable. A little risque for it's time and quite possibly the first "road movie", it's directed by Frank Capra and is one of only 3 movies which have won the Big 5 Oscars.
6:19 - that shot of Dorothy opening the door and seeing the land of Oz in color was all done in camera. The "black and white" shot of the door is actually shot in color with the door and walls painted to look black and white. The back of Dorothy's head is actually a stand in with make-up and costume to look black and white. When she opens the door we see the color outside and then Dorothy steps through the door - but this time it's Judy Garland in full color. Pretty simple but still one of the most famous shots in cinema!
Hey Shan, at 6:20 you got that right!! My mom saw this in 1939 at age 8 and she said the audience applauded and cheered at that unexpected scene. I think this was the first color movie at the time and released before Gone WtW, though there were colorized cartoons and FitzPatrick's Traveltalks may have been in color by then. From what I recall in documentaries about Oz is that the beginning and end scenes were also in color, but done to make it look sepia B&W for affect. @ 16:11 That's the "That's the horse of a different color" the driver was saying, a play on the old expression "That's _a_ horse of a different color" denoting any kind of a change in someone, something or situation. There's a documentary on the making of The Wizard Of Oz you would find very interesting. More movie suggestions from around this time are Orson Well's masterpiece "Citizen Kane" (1941), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) another good Bogart film, and another Capra classic "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1939). BTW, the reason "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." stands out for you is maybe, according to my mom who saw Gone WtW in '39 as well, that was the first time anyone heard a curse word in a movie!! (Hays code) She said the audience erupted in chatter at the curse word and applause toward Rhett for telling off Scarlett all at the same time. LOL! 😎👍
This is one of the rare examples where a film is considered the definitive telling of a story, even though it makes numerous significant departures from the source material -- in this case, the L. Frank Baum novel.
Return to Oz from 1985 might be my favorite. I love the darker tone and the genuinely creepy villains in there. It's not a musical btw so you don't have to worry about copyright 👌
@@brittyn I did like it. Call me kooky - I love all the Oz sequels, prequels, etc. There's even a 1970s era cartoon by the guys that did Fat Albert called Journey Back to Oz - a cartoon musical with Liza Minelli doing the voice of Dorothy.
Absolutely love this movie. Just wanted to point out that the workers in the emerald city can give the lion a perm and even due Dorothy s eyes to match her gown but they don't fix the holes in scarecrow s shirt.
The song lyricist, Yip Harburg, wrote all the songs in this film, as well as a number of other well know popular songs of the era such as "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," "It's Only a Paper Moon, April in Paris," and all the music for the for a number of musical plays and movies including "Finian's Rainbow," which also featured a song about a rainbow titled "Look to the Rainbow." Harburg considered rainbows to be an important symbol of hope and were a recurrent theme in his work. His song "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" came out in 1932 and is the defining song of the Great Depression. So popular and so resonant was this song with the hardships of that time that it has been credited with tipping the election of that year against Hoover and in favor of FDR. Harburg is one of the towering greats in the pantheon of American music, but his songs are truly international in their appeal. At the end of the Cold War when Soviet puppet governments of Eastern Europe were being overthrown, the Romanians after facing violent government repression gathered in the Bucharest city center and sang "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" when they heard news of the execution of their hated dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. But of all of these, his Academy Award winning song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" remains perhaps his greatest masterpiece.
When I was a child, this movie aired once a year on tv. I think it was 1965 or 1966 that I first saw it. It was an event for sure...we got to stay up late, have popcorn and snacks....it was so exciting!!!! I still love it. Oh, on a side note, it seemed that they had problems with the "muchkins", after shooting for the day many of them would get drunk and cause trouble!!
Fun fact, The first full color photo was created by accident. Back the day their was a photographer that liked to use gels or plastic with different colors to get different effects. Later he started projecting his black and white photos with the same color gels. One day he took the same shot using a blue, Yellow and Red gel and later superimposed the image with the same color to backlight using gels. Magic, a color image was created. All color cameras and have light sensitive filters that divide images into a similar situation to make color images. Color TV for the longest time Had Red Green and Yellow light gun that would recreate color images using some for of this basic process.
Very Few people get the Oil can joke. When the call went out for little people back in 1937 , they came from all over the country and the studio assigned them to a hotel and it was the first time most of the actors ever saw anyone else like them selves. There were tales of crazy stories and debauchery. There is a movie that somewhat depicts some of the stories "Under the Rainbow" 1981
"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." Wise words to live by. 😎 👍 Fun Fact: "Over The Rainbow" 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.
There are so many interesting facts about this movie. One that I was shocked to learn recently was that the Tinman had to be recast because the original actor (Buddy Ebsen) was hospitalized after 9 days of filming due to inhaling aluminum dust from the makeup. When Jack Haley got hired, they changed the makeup to an aluminum paste instead.
The stocking was used just in the POV shot (Point of View) for Dorothy looking out of the window and seeing the funnel cloud under the house. The scene of the tornado in the farm field were composites of miniatures and rear projections. The Funnel Cloud itself was a seven foot piece controlled overhead with dirt blown from beneath the floor. The book, THE MAKING OF THE WIZARD OF OZ goes into the details. There are also videos on RUclips that illustrate how the Special Effects were achieve. While most were "Mechanical" effects, that term has taken on a new name, "Practical Effects."
Disney wanted to do an animated version of this movie since 1935, before MGM bought the rights. Shirley Temple was considered for Dorothy before Judy Garland was chosen. Buddy Ebson was cast as the Tin Man but left the project as he was allergic to the Tin Man Makeup. Judy Garland was forced to take weight loss pills and barbiturates to make herself look thinner The Munchkin actors got drunk and sexually harassed Garland on set. When the Cowardly Lion made an appearance, Garland laughed at him and director Victor Fleming slapped In the face to set her straight. Garland kissed Fleming on the cheek and thanked him The scene where they run through the flowers, and Dorothy and the Lion start to fall asleep, they used asbestos to represent snow for the scene. Fleming, Richard, Thorpe, King Vidor, and George Cukor all directed the film, before Fleming was named sole director.
It's weird that makeup causes so many problems with productions. Virginia Hey was forced to leave "Farscape" in the early 2000's because of her negative reaction to the makeup they were putting on her. It was actually causing serious kidney problems which resulted in renal failure at one point...
Shan,Technicolor was done with a giant camera that had 3 rolls of black and white film running simultaneously,each with a colored filter so it would record one color of the three primary colors.And the prints were kind of like lithography,with each color pressed like a rubber stamp onto blank film.
So glad you watched this one. I grew up near L. Frank Baum's hometown of Chittenango, and every year they have a festival dedicated to his works. Oz has always been a big part of my life, and I'm an enormous fan of Judy Garland. For me, this film is a fairly faithful adaptation of his work, but it's mostly about the incredible technicolor photography and the talent of the principal actors, all of whom were old vaudevillians. For a more faithful adaptation, I believe Walter Murch's underrated film "Return to Oz" is definitely worth a watch. If you like technicolor photography, you MUST see The Red Shoes (1948), which is arguably the finest technicolor film ever made, and arguably one of the best films ever made. I think it would blow your mind.
It's wild to me, and honestly really touching, to see people who've never seen this react to a movie that's been part of American childhoods for about 3-4 generations now. I can't remember how I felt the first time I watched this, probably because I was really young.
LOL, the coach driver explained it - that horse is the Horse Of A Different Color. So every time you look at him, his color has changed! Speaking of color, it was very important in the original story, and the filmmakers had to contend with it. In the book, Kansas is described as grey - everything, including the people, were relentlessly grey. But when they went to make the film, they realized they had to change that because in movies at the time, _everything_ was grey (in other words, black-and-white), so using grey wouldn't be a comment on Kansas. Thus, in order to make Kansas seem colorless in contrast to Oz, it was decided to make sepia the color of dullness and "old timey" reality.
Judy Garland was also great in Easter Parade another musical she co star with Fred Astaire .To me it was the highest peek of Garland's career showing her acting dancing and singing ability in a classic blockbuster movie.
18:10 In 1968 the producers of "Planet of the Apes" contacted producers and special effects staff from The Wizard of Oz to get an idea of how to do the prosthetics for the apes in the '68 film! That's why it's interesting that you mention the two films when there really IS a connection!
I keep forgetting the older I get how different things are. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s it was almost impossible to have not seen this movie. You had to actively go out of your way to not see it. It would get played on TV as a special event once every year on Prime Time Television. Kind of like A Christmas Story during Christmas, But now an entire generation has grown up where that was not the case and you have to actively go out of your way TO see it. I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen this movie in my life, but a lot. After it stopped being played on TV I bought it on DVD and watched it a bunch since. That transition from Sepia Tone in the house to Color entering Oz NEVER gets old. One thing though that just never occurred to me until the most recent time I watched it. When Glinda shows up she explains quote "Only BAD Witches are ugly." but the FIRST words out of her mouth to Dorothy are "Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?" Glinda was throwing shade at Dorothy like "*Snaps Fingers* Girlfriend you ain't all that! You got nothing on me!" in her own polite way, which is freaking HILARIOUS! 🤣
Whenever this happens to be on TV, my mom always talks about how, as a kid, it was pure nightmare fuel for her when the Wicked Witch of the West’s face suddenly appears in the crystal ball when Dorothy is calling out to Aunt Em. As a kid in the 50’s, I guess that was pretty intense. 😂😂🥰
You have to watch A Star is Born.1954. Judy singing and dancing "Swanee" is unforgettable. Also, check out Easter Parade. Judy with Fred Astaire. "A Couple of Swells" is a brilliant song and dance number performed on a moving stage.
Dorothy stepping out from a world of sepia tone to Technicolor is amazing. Judy's stand in (dressed in sepia) opens the door, (you only see the back of her head) then backs out of the frame, instantly replaced by Judy Garland in her color costume stepping through the door into Munchkinland.
The three-strip Technicolor process was used in this film and for many years which meant the camera had three reels of film rolling all at once required the camera to be very large and quite noisy so a covering was used to reduce the noise called a blimp which made the camera even more cumbersome. However when done right Technicolor films looked beautiful. Two other beautiful films in Technicolor are The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus.
Great reaction, Shan. This is a true classic and very entertaining. "That's a horse of a different color" is an old American idiom for something unusual or if someone veers off topic to the discussion and you point out that it is irrelevant. In this case it became an amusing color-changing horse. You did not comment on the plot, but I will share my take on the ending. While Dorothy's recovery was a relief to all, what she took from her adventure, spoken both to Glinda and her family, was that her interest in adventure beyond the horizon was squashed, which to me is sad. Also, the problem with Miss Gulch was not resolved - Toto was still slated for destruction (unless the tornado got the old woman). That is the only negative for me. You have a lot of great comments to go thru and history to appreciate here! Thanks for posting this, and all the work that went into it.
The problem about Toto at the ending always bothered me too, even as a child. We know Mrs. Gultch is going to come back for Toto, so the pivotal problem of the movie has not really been solved.
Also, Judy Garland-wise, watch her performance in "A Star Is Born." She's an exposed, raw nerve in that movie. Heartbreaking and vulnerable in ways that few actors of the 20th century could truly be. (And James Mason is equally as heartbreaking.)
...as Groucho Marx wrote in a consolation Telegram to Judy Garland regarding her Oscar loss for 'A Star Is Born'...."the biggest robbery since the Brink's heist"!
I saw this for the first time on tv as a child in the early 60s. I remember being fearful of the wicked witch and the scene where the stocking-ed feet of the witch of the west curled up and retreated under the house absolutely terrified me. Good times !
I love Technicolor films! There is just something about those old Technicolor films that digital can't replicate. It probably had to do with the hardship that the crew and actors dealt with. I just like super saturated color, like a colored etching.
Color film of the time required massive numbers of arc lamps for lighting and those limitations are why it was well into the 50's and 60's before most movies were in color as the technology of the film improved. Arc lamps are very hard to work with because the produce unbearable heat, lots of UV and use super high voltages that created additional dangers of fire, electrocution, and simply causing temporary blindness (welders eye) if exposed to it for too long.
@@larrybremer4930 Have you ever listened to the commentary track on "Doctor X." 1932. It's in two strip technicolor. It's a film that opened my eyes on technicolor. In the commentary he states that on scene they wanted to use manikins, but the heat from the lights was so intense the manikins melted so actors were used.
As a boomer born in 1962, this movie was an annual TV event that was every bit as important to a middle-American child of that era as birthdays and Christmas. The movie is very good, but it holds a special place in the hearts of many from that era.
Technicolor works by running three strips of black and white film through the camera simultaneously, each with different filters on the lenses. They could were, after editing, combined onto a single strip of color film for projection.
When I was a kid, this movie came on once a year.. usually around Easter. It was appointment viewing. For being made in 1939, it's an astonishing film.
When I was a kid, we were stationed in Germany, and found out our next move was going to be Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Because of this film, I was half-convinced Kansas was going to be in black and white, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go.
“Surrender, Dorothy!” When I was a little girl back in the 50s and 60s I used to watch it on my black and white tv. when it would come on-once a year. I’d get so excited!!!!! Those flying monkeys freaked me out!! I loved the songs! I always knew it changed to color in OZ but couldn’t see it on my tv!
Technicolour was done by filming on 3 strips of different coloured film. So it was filmed in colour, with the house set, dress and makeup of Dorothy opening the door to Oz being actually sepia coloured, the Dorothy double stepping out of frame and Judy Garland stepping into frame
The entire score was written for this film. Written by the talented team of Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, they were tasked to write an integrated score that advanced the plot of the film. So every song, including "Over The Rainbow," was specifically written for this film. "Over The Rainbow" became Judy Garland's signature song for the rest of her life.
The two doormen and the driver of the horse that changed color, the Wizard and the carnival man were all the same. The scarecrow who needed the brains always had the ideas, the tin man wanted a heart always cried. The lion beat up the guards did it with courage. They already have what they were looking for
6:20 Very cool visual effects hack here. They couldn't film both B&W and color at the same time so the room set is painted B&W. A body double of Garland is wearing B&W clothes. She steps off camera and Garland steps in wearing color clothes.
Every single frame of this movie was shot on the old MGM studio lot in Culver City CA. All the songs were written for the film by Arlen and Harburg. MGM boss LB Mayer and other executives hated it - most specifically the barnyard setting - and ordered it cut, feeling it slowed the pace, but the composers held fast and the song is always at the top of the list of greatest film music performances. And yes, Judy Garland’s Dorothy is the glue that holds this bright piñata together. Thanks for your reaction!
tornado effect was done using a bunch of blankets and a rotating drum... He created the tornado out of a wind sock that they use at airports. The whole tornado was made out of a wool cloth that was 35 feet tall. He mended the fabric with music wire so it would hold together when spun. Gillespie then attached the top of the tornado to the top of the sound stage to a gantry way that was across the top of the stage. He attached the bottom part of the tornado to a slit in the ground and then was attached to a car that moved along the length of the stage.
Sometime in I guess the late thirties, at a dance convention, my talented mother, probably late teens, was an on-stage dance assistant for Ray Bolger. She would run her own school for about fifty years, passing away in 2013. She was a good teacher, choreographer, and costume designer. She helped probably thousands of girls improve themselves. Go Mom!
The jacket Professor Marvel wears in the beginning was found in a thrift store when the props department was looking for a jacket that showed "faded elegance." When the actor put his hands in the pockets he found the nametag of the previous owner, L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz books.
The movie bombed at the box office in 1939 when it was released. It wasn't until years later that it earned money on re-release. The movie became a cultural phenomenon after shown on television.
Frank Morgan, who played the Carnival guy and the "Wizard," also played 2-3 other parts including the first doorman, and the soldier protecting the Wizard of Oz building, and was also the guy driving the colorful horse carriage and singing "The Merry Old Land of Oz." it was a sort of joke on the children in the audience if you didn't realize it until you were an adult. Frank Morgan was always hysterical in anything he played on screen, often playing some kind of failure of a con artist.
This is an absolute Xmas classic in the UK, its shown every year without fail. Interestingly the film was something of a flop on its initial release, and only gained classic status after it was broadcast on TV year in and year out. We did a production of this at school, the endless rehearsals means that the songs are absolutely burned into my memory.
Judy did 27 movies for MGM in 13 years sometimes working up to 72 hours at a time. Establishing that kind of legacy comes with a price she was an entertainer; it was all she knew, and she gave it her all until there was no more to give. I think she was a master at manipulating her facial and vocal expression to convey feeling and emotion. She could literally sing anything as close to perfect as you will probably ever hear. Her breath control is insane if you are serious about learning to sing listen to some of the earlier Judy garland it's a master class in vocal technique.
You were wondering how difficult it was to perform in the Tinsman’s costume? Well, Jack Haley was a substitute for the original actor, Buddy Ebsen, who had filmed only a few scenes when he was sent to the hospital in reaction to the aluminum powder used in his makeup, which got into his lungs. They had to take a new approach to Haley’s makeup.
When I saw this as a child, it really did feel magical. I think it's not CGI, it's the production quality and whimsical nature. I wish modern films would remember that a well told story, with great production always works better than loads of CGI.
Technicolor was a two-color dye transfer process. The Technicolor camera capture two frames, one through a red filter and one through a blue filter, in turn before capturing the next two frames the same way. Dye transfer is a very rich color process, because the colors are actual dyes. The dyes of the inter mediate prints were physically transferred to the final print. That final print originated as black and white film and carries the soundtrack. There were earlier Technicolor processes back to 1919 that worked somewhat differently. The elaborate process was patented and became another way to say a film's color would be amazingly vivid. We still talk of such things as "technicolor" dreams. Kodachrome, a later Kodak process, was also a dye process, which accounted for it also fabulous color.
One of my favorite classics. I will only always be amazed by their tornado effect given what they had to work with. I once saw a "making of" and still am amazed. I know a giant stocking and large mirror were involved. Other old movies that I will always love are "Rebel Without a Cause" & and "Its a Wonderful Life"
Ok so Technicolor works like this: There is a prism inside the camera that splits the light into RGB. Each part of that is then exposed onto three separate black & white film strips. Each strip/reel is developed & printed & then the prints are passed through the appropriate color dye & when the three are then laid over one another, it produces a decent approximation of natural color.
Some interesting facts. The scenes shot in Kansas were filmed in sepia to represent the dry dull landscape of Kansas and then switches to Technicolor for the Oz scenes to showcase the magical beauty of Oz. When Toto escapes and runs home and jumps through the window if you look carefully the wallpaper has a poppy flower pattern to foreshadow the poison poppy field. During the filming of the scarecrow song and dance scene, Dorothy’s pigtails change lengths. There are many more interesting facts about this classic movie.
Victor Fleming is the credited director, but left to work on Gone With the Wind - two others worked on the movie. The film was shot entirely on sound stages at MGM, which today is Sony Pictures (Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are taped here). Cute reaction.
In the 1950s and '60s, "The Wizard of Oz" was shown on national TV only once a year, and millions of kids anticipated it and watched it every time. So there are quantities of people who are now old who recognize the different characters and can quote some of the famous lines. For us, this was a shared cultural experience. "I'll get you, my pretty - and your little dog, too!" "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!" "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" By the late 1970s, with the increasing use of home video recorders and the ability to rent films on tape, the "Wizard" showings ended and its influence diminished.
The horse was literally dipped in Jell-O to create the different colors. Many tidbits of lore. One of the actors received an old jacket that was found in a second hand store. There was a card or handkerchief in a pocket that showed it had belonged to the author L. Frank Baum. Buddy Ebsen was going to play the tin man, but he developed a horrible reaction to the toxic aluminum paint.
The actor who got the jacket was Frank Morgan, the man playing the Wizard. And Buddy didn't react to the paint. He reacted to aluminum _powder,_ which was dusted onto him like talcum and caused severe respiratory issues. When he was replaced, the makeup department also decided to replace the powder with an aluminum paste makeup, which is what was used on Jack Haley and did not cause those problems.
The creation of the tornado was a huge, elaborate process. The final model was really big (30 feet tall) and it required a large structure to hold it up, and a track it could be moved on from above. It was remarkably successful in looking not only very realistic, but genuinely threatening as well.
The Wicked Witch only disappeared in a pillar of lame once as Margret Hamilton was very nearly badly burned during that sequence in Munchkinland. Another bit of trivia is that "Somewhere of teh Rainbow", considered to be one of the greatest movie songs ever, was almost axed because the suits at MGM thought it was undignified for an MGM starlet to be singing in a barn yard..
While not technically the first color movie, it was certainly the movie that made technicolor the standard for the next 40 years. The same year came out Gone with the wind. Another early color classic. There are noticeable differences with the book but rarely an adaptation had been put on the screen such as you feel you are viewing the book, if not completely storywise, at least in the world and its feel. The color parts of the movie hold up surprisingly well even in the make up and FX departement. In itself a small miracle given that the movie is almost 85 years old. The song Over the Rainbow is so beautiful,. If you can, do watch the MadTV alternate ending of the Wizard of Oz, simply hilarious. Needless to say the impact it had on western culture. It truly is a classic in every single sense of the term. I strongly suggest you watch an early Hitchcock classic. the 1935 spy film The 39 steps. Absolutely fantastic. You won't regret it. Also his 1943 thriller Shadow of a doubt that he considers his favorite film he did.
The Thin Man (1934) and The Women (1939) are two of my favorites from this time period. Actually, I love the entire 6 movie series of Thin Man movies. You're right about the Tin Man costume. The actor originally hired for the part, Buddy Ebsen, had yo be replaced because he had such a severe allergic reaction to the silver paint.
Actually Ebsen was originally the Scarecrow, and Ray Bolger was the Tin Man. But they decided to switch roles. (I assume they had to get permission from somebody.) And then Ebsen reacted to the makeup. I believe it was the aluminum content, and was either toxicity or else just that his pores couldn't breathe. Anyway, he lost out on that role. He also lost out on playing Davy Crockett, because Disney spotted Fess Parker in the SciFi movie "Them," cast him, and demoted Ebsen to sidekick. But at least Ebsen got to dance onscreen with Shirley Temple, and play Jed Clampett and Barnaby Jones, and do a dance at his own 90th birthday party. Life is a mix of highs and lows.
I grew up in the 1960s when network TV would broadcast this movie once a year. It was always a big event that every family in the neighborhood looked forward to... I especially remember watching it on a color television set for the first time!! That, and being utterly terrified of the flying monkeys!!
I believe that Dorothy's Ruby Slippers are enshrined in the Smithsonian Museum. Another side note is that the Professor/Wizard of Oz part was offerred to W.C.Fields who turned it down. And yes, usually sometime before or around Easter every year there are stations/channels that still show this film. I know I've seen it Dozens of times.
"Oh, they're back!" You noticed the abrupt transition from the WItch's castle to the WIzard's throne room, which even bothered me a bit as a kid. There was actually an elaborate musical number here (notice that there are no songs in act III?) which starts with the guard singing 'Hail Hail the Witch is Dead' and transitions (with a trombone slide) to the Emerald City with a reprise of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead (with a bit of The Merry Old Land of Oz), and ending with 'You're off to see the Wizard... Let him know the Wicked Witch is dead!" with the Emerald Citizens flanking our heroes as they head to the throne room through the tunnel. You can find RUclips vids with the soundtrack (which was preserved) and the few stills and a couple of seconds that were preserved in a trailer. The MGM powers that be cut it for time, and (as you noticed without realizing it) that marred the film. As the film stands, the big moment of the witch's death, the 'eucatastrophe' (as Tolkien put it), is pretty flat emotionally, and lacks the joyousness that it really deserves. All to save less than two minutes of run time. Interestingly, perhaps, with CGI, deepfakery, and re-recording, this scene could probably be nicely reconstructed and inserted nowadays, if someone wanted to invest the resources and the intellectual property quagmire could be sorted out. Another Act III song, 'The Jitterbug', was also cut, but that's another story.
The jitterbug is actually referred to in the final cut of the film where the witch says, "I've sent a little insect ahead to take the fight out of them."
Yeah they cut and trimmed a lot of songs and dance numbers; Ray Bolger, one of the greatest dancers ever to grace Hollywood, had a whole extended dance sequence in If I Only Had a Brain that was cut from the film. It must have been so disappointing for him after he fought so hard to play Scarecrow instead of the role in which he was originally cast, Tin-Man; he specifically wanted to play Scarecrow so that he could dance full-out and not be held back by a constricting costume like the Tin-Man’s costume.
Fun facts: The Tin man, Jack Haley was a replacement for the original, Buddy Ebsen, who was hospitalized three days after starting because of the aluminum powder coating his lungs. The makeup was afterward altered to be aluminum paste. Tin Man's costume was so big that he had to lean on a board and would take naps there. The Lion's costume was 90lbs, most of it was a real lion skin. The prosthetic was so much that he took his meals through a straw. The Wicked Witch was burned badly when filming the disappearance. Her face and hand had 2nd an 3rd degree burns and it was a race against time to get her copper based makeup off because it would have burned her skin even more. Her stunt double was hospitalized when her broom exploded during a smoke effect. Margaret Hamilton had the softest spot for children having been a former kindergarten teacher. She was horrified that kids were scared of her, so much so that she appeared as the Witch on Sesame street in an episode that was never shown again because parents wrote in that she scared their kids. She appeared later on Mr. Rogers talking about how she gets into her costume and plays pretend. The Witch is listed as one of the top Cinema Villains of all time. The cyclone was a muslin rig put into a track and spun at high speeds combined with dirt. Over the Rainbow was nearly taken out of the movie altogether because producers felt it slowed the movie down. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed. It was written for the movie. If you read the book you know the shoes were silver originally. They were made ruby due to Technicolor being a very new process. One pair of ruby slippers was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum and were found only recently after more than a decade lost. And my favorite piece of trivia: The coat Professor Marvel wears in the beginning actually was made for L Frank Baum. They discovered it in filming and it was confirmed later by his widow and his tailor.
Three Strip Technicolor was the method used to process the films color sequences. To date, it is the most visually vibrant method of color processing. Jut LOOK at the striking reds and blues! The blue of the water in Munchkinland, or the glittering red of those slippers! There are other films in the 1940s that use Three Strip Technicolor and they are just gorgeous. Especially when the camera catches jewelry like rubies and emeralds!
Technicolor was actually around since the early 1920s. Douglas Fairbanks put it on the map and basically saved it from bankruptcy by using it for "The Black Pirate" (1926) (fantastic movie, like all of Fairbanks'). By 1939, there had been plenty of hit Technicolor movies, as well as many others released that year. ("Adventures Of Robin Hood" was the year before; "Drums Along The Mohawk", Private Lives Of Elizabeth & Essex" and "Gone With The Wind" were also 1939) That doesn't make that magic moment any less wonderful, but Technicolor was well-known by then, not to mention that they had been experimenting with color (and sound, for that matter) going back to the earliest days of film (1890s).
The "horse of a different color" was done by sponging different flavors of Jell-O powder onto different horses. They needed some kind of dye that wasn't toxic. The horses didn't cooperate since they would lick the sweet stuff off of themselves.
this was part of my childhood at Christmas or Easter when i was young i got sit down and watch wizard of oz. or Casablanca every year. i am glad you watched this as it gives good values in life and gives you a good feel inside. and you always will always say there is no place like home
This has been our family's Thanksgiving day movie for a few generations. I love how each generation of children love it like it was brand new. I could say how many times I've probably seen it, but I won't. I still love it every time. Great reaction and review. Thanks
Hey guys! I know most songs in the movie are cut out. It took 3 re-edits and over a month of copyright disputes to get it uploaded. Anything more than 3-4 seconds of music gets instantly copyrighted by the algorithm...
Well then fuck 'em!
How about a Charly Chaplin movie like "the great dictator"?
Thanks for all the hard work.
Thanks for your hard work.
Considering just about everyone else has seen this movie already, we all know the songs anyhow. Thank you for the video! You're an awesome gentleman.
Margaret Hamilton was a lovely, gentle woman. She was so concerned about the way the Witch scared children that she eventually went on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, bringing along her costume, and demonstrated getting dressed, all the while talking about it so the kids watching could see the Witch was not a real person, but just a character for an actor.
Awww, that's really sweet of her!
I always feel bad for actors who play iconically bad characters, they always seem to get a lot of hate mail or bad feeling; Mr.T's mother was really upset with him when he played Clubber Lang in Rocky III, because of the way the character disrespected Adrian.
@@Kainlarsen It's ironic because most actors will tell you it's way more fun to play a bad guy than a good guy.
She got burned by the fire effects they used in the movie
Yes. She was burned very badly, also. BUDDY Epsin was hired to play the timing, but almost died because he was allergic to the make up!
I remember that episode!
I’m sure someone mentioned this, but when I was a kid, before VHS tapes and cable, this movie played on tv once a year, and it was an EVENT! Such a wonderful film…
And when it was on, then and today, you just knew everyone else was watching it at the same time, as if the world is the movie theater.
When we got a color tv several friends came over to watch this.
It was a big event, once a year! Eventually watched it on a color tv. Which was somewhat primitive by today's standards.
But still a magical movie for me in the early 60's.
And Peter Pan with Mary Martin playing the lead. More great songs.
It always played on Thanksgiving Day on CBS. It was an event and it is where the movie became a timeless classic. It did not do particularly well when it was originaly released, much like "It's a Wonderful Life".
Technicolor is actually an old technology that was invented in the silent era. It used a special camera with a beam splitter that divided the image into three beams that went through three colored filters: one red, one green, and one blue. The filtered images were focused onto three black and white film strips. When they made a print, they would use the black and white negatives to make a single color print using a complex dye transfer process. It was complicated and expensive, but it produced great results. One advantage of Technicolor is that the colors in the negatives don't fade, because they don't have any dyes in them (black and white doesn't fade over time the way color does). A side note: the original Technicolor process used only two negatives, one with a red filter and one with a green filter-the viewer's brain would fill in the blue color. I once saw the silent movie The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks that used the two-color Technicolor process, and I thought it worked pretty well.
The tornado was achieved with a long, twisted piece of muslin cloth.
Director Victor Fleming and the wardrobe department picked out a coat for actor Frank Morgan to wear as the Wizard. One day Morgan turned one of the pockets inside-out and discovered a label that said the coat had been made for L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books.
They originally wanted to cast Shirley Temple as Dorothy. It would have been an entirely different movie. Temple was typecast as a cute little kid. Also, Garland was a much better singer than Temple.
They originally cast Buddy Ebsen as The Tin Man, but he had to quit because he had an allergic reaction to the silver makeup, so they got Jack Haley instead. Ebsen is best known today as Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was a kind woman who loved children. It bothered her that children were afraid of her after this movie came out. Mr. Rogers once had her on his show so she could explain to children that it was all just make-believe, and that they shouldn't be afraid of witches.
The actors who played the Munchkins were from Europe. Many were Jewish, and they stayed in the U.S. rather than return to Nazi Germany.
The horses in Emerald City were colored with Jell-O mix. They had to shoot the scenes quickly before the horses licked it off.
Margaret Hamilton was badly burned in one of the stunts in this movie, and she refused to do any more stunts like it for the rest of the filming.
The "snow" in the poppy field was made from asbestos.
Toto got $125 a week. The Munchkins each only got $50 a week.
Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics to all the songs, and Harold Arlen wrote the music. Both wrote a large number of other songs, and wrote some together apart from Wizard of Oz, including It's Only a Paper Moon. They'd have worked more together, except that Harburg drove Arlen crazy with his political opinions. Harburg was a socialist. It's not that Arlen disagreed with Harburg, but that Harburg wouldn't shut up about it.
Harburg also wrote:
April in Paris
Brother Can You Spare a Dime?
Arlen is considered one of the all-time great American songwriters - some of his best are
Accentuate the Positive
Come Rain or Come Shine
Get Happy
I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues
One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)
Stormy Weather
That Old Black Magic.
The song Over the Rainbow was almost cut from the movie. It's a slow number, and they thought the movie was too long. Fortunately, they left it in. Otherwise it would have been lost to history. In 2004 the American Film Institute ranked it #1 in their list of 100 Greatest Songs in American Films. It was also named The Song of the Century by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Never knew that Technicolor was so old.
I still do miss the song The Jitterbug in the movie, the song they cut instead of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.
Yarburg did the lyrics to the 1950 Broadway musical Flahooley, it’s ‘ok’.
Arlen wrote around 6 Broadway musicals, the best of which is 1954’s House of Flowers, with Pearl Bailey.
to answer your question, the entire movie was shot on sets, with certain exceptions location shooting was extremely rare in hollywood productions at this time, studios had entire large backlots where just about any location (from new york city to the old west to outer space) could be constructed, the union set designers and builders were some of the great craftspeople of the classic era
I agree with your last part especially. The union technicians were superb in that era and still are.
@@shmizzle99 It was actually a large gantry crane to which the muslin cloth and chicken wire tornado was attached at the top. The bottom of the tornado was attached to a smallish cart on a track and stagehands hidden just beneath the set would move the cart back and forth. So the top and bottom of the tornado could be moved independently while the chicken wire at the top enabled it to maintain its basic funnel--like shape.
Yes, a lot of the people involved in set construction were later used in WW2 to create camouflage for vehicles and also to build fake vehicles to deny the Axis useful intelligence.
I always thought parts of it were shot on location in Oz.
The Wicked Witch was a real trooper in this film. For years, she would get asked to do conventions to scare kids, which she did. She was a kindergarten teacher and also was on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and explained (for kids) the difference between movies & real life. During the movie, she suffered first-degree burns on the right side of her face and second-degree burns on her right hand when she exits Munchkinland; the flames rose too soon, before she had descended below the stage.
She was also a substitute ballet instructor. She taught my mom when she was little.
@@DigiVixen Outstanding!
The funniest "TV Guide"-style synopsis of The Wizard of Oz That I ever read: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."
Also robs the corpse and refuses to give it back to the grieving relative.
Pfft! Love it and have to share it now!😄
I will never get over just how realistic and frightening that twister is---to this day that entire sequence holds up, and the old school filming techniques really surpasses the quality of most modern depictions. Fantastic stuff!
The twister in this film is still scary. decades after I first saw in when I was 7.
Same here. I recall reading in a book back in the 80's that they blew air through a nylon sock to create the tornado effect.
Horrors Behind the Scenes of the Wizard of Oz
ruclips.net/video/LLyXxB0bgNg/видео.html
The twister in this film looks even more real that those computer generated ones in the movie Twister!
@@saaamember97 That's hilarious considering Twister's only selling point is its special effects (which have aged terribley.)
5:00 The tornado in this movie was done by using chicken wire, a long stretched out legging, and a lot of dirt on the bottom spinning rapidly! Many meteorologist consider this tornado to be the most accurate portrayal of a tornado in cinema!
MGM used the effect in their movies until the mid 50's.
I always wondered how they did that
The scene of the house falling from the sky was shot by dropping a miniature house from a scaffold onto a floor painted to resemble the sky and running the film in reverse. The magic of practical effects are so much more interesting than C.G.I. will ever be.
@@ronaldjeffrey8712 The reason CGI is so unconvincing is that, no matter what they do, it's just a cartoon. Done with a machine instead of paint and brush, but still just a cartoon. That will never be as satisfying as watching a film where you keep asking yourself, "How did they DO that??"
@@Serai3 For me the most entertaining part of a film is figuring out how the practical effects are done. Sadly these days the answers is usually just some guy sitting at a keyboard.
Your observation of Professor Marvel and The Wizard was spot on. They were both played by the GREAT character actor Frank Morgan. What most people don't know is that he actually played 6 characters in this movie. 1)Professor Marvel, 2)The Doorman at the entrance to the Emerald City, 3)The Cabby that took them to get cleaned up, 4)The guard at the door leading to The Wizard, 5)The voice of the Fire Wizard, and 6)The Wizard himself. We lost him in 1949 and he never got to see the colorization version.
Technicolor ran three strips of film through the camera: a red strip, a blue strip, and a green strip. Each strip captured its own part of the visible spectrum. Then, in the lab, all three strips were printed down -- which is to say combined -- to a single reel of film that resulted in a full, true-color image. Technicolor was loved because of the incredible flexibility available in the lab to make color adjustments due to having each channel of color on a separate reel.
To add a bit of extra info to your fine explanation, technicolor was around a good while by the time WoO was made, existing even during the silent era. However, it was at first only "two-strip" technicolor, missing one of the three colors, I forget which. The goal was always to end up with "three-strip", but it took time to get there. Videos on "two-strip" / "two-color" technicolor, as well as the overall history of technicolor, can be found here at RUclips.
@@Decrepit_Productions And to REALLY bring it full circle -- and thank you for building on our impromptu history -- one of the first two-strip Technicolor movies was the original "A Star Is Born" with Frederic March! And I don't know about you, but I've always been glad they got to three-strip so quickly. Two-strip is pretty much the ugliest method for achieving "color" ever made. A necessary step, as you point out. But man, SO hideous looking, those pinks and greens!
A great documentary short (it can be found currently on RUclips) is "Jack Cardiff: Painting with Light"...Cardiff was the legendary cinematographer who worked on Powell & Pressburger's classic movies. His stories, such as getting selected to run Technicolor even though he had no background technical expertise with it and demonstrating how it worked are well worth watching!
@@gammaanteria I'll look it up! Thanks!
To be specific, you are referring to film negatives. A prism was used to split filtered light to separate red, green, and blue images on each black and white negative. Since there was not color negative film at the time, the impressions on the black and white film were used in a dye transfer process to create the color.
An interesting piece of trivia is that when the costumers were looking for an old coat for the character of "Professor Marvel" they found one in a second hand shop and discovered a label inside that read "L. Frank Baum". The coat had originally belonged to the author of The Wizard Of Oz!
Also, there is a story (possibly apocryphal) that when L. Frank Baum was writing the original story, he was couldn't think of a name for his magical land. Then he looked at his two-drawer filing cabinet: the top drawer was labeled A-N. The bottom drawer was labeled O-Z. Problem solved!
Good thing it wasn't U-Z. "The Wizard of UZ" Doesn't have the same ring to it :)
The likely reason that there was a coat belonging to Baum in the area was that he spent the last years of his life in the L.A. area - he had a small movie studio where the very first Oz movies were made (he wasn’t as good a filmmaker as he was a writer, unfortunately).
@@gerstelb Cool! I never realized that he ended up in California. Given that he died in 1919, it's amazing that the coat turned up in a second-hand store 20 years later, right when the costumer for Wizard of Oz was looking for an old-fashioned frock coat.
@6:43 i got really into the technicolor process last year and read a ton about it. Technicolor process had been around since about 1914 and was used on particular films from that point on. the acid colors they used are extremely stable and vibrant. even now decades later, technicolor prints are so sharp, high resolution, and vibrantly color accurate, that they are considered of archival quality, dating as far back as 1917!!!
@10:57 It uses 3 separate exposed film negatives (cyan, magenta, and yellow - which are the negative colors of red, green and blue) filmed at the same time, and synced and pressed together during the process. Because the cameras were using 3 separate reels of film simultaneously, some technicolor cameras at the time could weight up to 500lbs!!!
Edit: Just wanted to add that have gone back and watched a bunch of older technicolor films and comparing them to modern media - i can unequivocally say there is just no substitute for technicolor. In my mind it was and will be the undisputed king for color and clarity
"The Adventures of Robin Hood" 1938 is considered the best Technicolor Film ever made! ..... The costumes just Pop!
The tornado was actually a large muslin stocking, stretching at a length of 35 feet. Muslin being the same material used for windsocks. The top of the stocking was attached to a gantry that gave it the spinning motion. The bottom was attracted to a rod that ran the length of the soundstage. A dustpan of a material called “Fullers Earth” was used to give off the cloud of dust. The rolling clouds were actually painted on two glass panels, and the effects supervisor moved the panels in alternating directions to give off the illusions. The shots where Dorothy hurries back to the farm and see the debris flying past her window was actually a rear projection (a large screen that projects the image of the twister sweeping the Kansas landscape). The shots of the house flying in the cyclone and then falling on the Witch of the East was actually a reverse shot of the miniature house falling down over a matte painting and clouds of dry ice vapor and dropping the prop off the top of the soundstage to make it look like the house is flying.
This movie still holds up to this day, I think. I try to put myself in the shoes of people who saw this in 1939 and how awestruck I would’ve been!
My great grandma is like 93, and she said when this movie first came out people in the theatres were gasping and they were awestruck at the part when Dorothy steps out of her house and into the land of Oz. It’s amazing that this movie is 83 years old and it still holds up today. The Wizard of Oz is such an amazing, magical, and timeless classic.
There were plenty of color films in the 30s prior to wizard of oz
Evan Hughes There weren’t a lot tho
@@IsaacLikesGames There were enough
@@evanhughes1510 not like this.
The wizard "throne room" scene is not composite. The head was projected onto the steam cloud and captured in camera. Inglorious Bastards paid homage to it in it's "burning cinema" scene.
Amazing
Margaret Hamilton was Judy Garland's best friend on the set. JG was treated miserably by the cast and director. MH would bring her into her trailer and giver her tea and advice.
It broke my heart when I learned how Judy was treated 💔 especially being made to feel ugly and fat. And creating the beginning of her addiction to drugs 😭
After hearing about all the stuff that happened behind the scenes, it made me love and appreciate the movie so much more. Those actors/actresses went through a lot to give us this amazing masterpiece of a movie
@@brittyn She deserved so much better than she got... poor woman's life was ruined by this film, I think.
@@Kainlarsen curious why do I think that? Judy loved this film and never blamed it for her troubles. Judy was pretty much an addict before this film was made.
Whether she did the film or not her life still would have had the same trajectory imo. Mgm was hellbent on exploiting her talent, if anything I think this film probably was the only thing she really could look back on with a sense of pride, worthy of the pain she endured
For another gorgeous Technicolor film from a year earlier, you should watch The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, one of the best swashbucklers ever! It’s just loads of fun.
Yes! Such a fantastic, entertaining movie.
I second (or third) this suggestion!!! And if you decide that swashbucklers are your thing, Rouben Mammoulian's THE MARK OF ZORRO starring Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone is a great one! -- and speaking of Tyrone Power, the original NIGHTMARE ALLEY is a must if you also plan to watch the Del Toro remake.
And the horse Trigger is in it. Made Marion rides him
@@richelliott9320 is that true? I’ve never heard about this. That’s wild.
@@brettv5967 last time I saw the movie I thought the horse looked stunning. Wikipedia said Roy Rogers later bought him and he was trigger
Did you ever notice that the only character from Kansas who didn't have a counterpart in Oz was Uncle Henry? Even Auntie Em was there, in the crystal ball.
Back in the 1960s, one of the TV networks (CBS, I think) aired this movie annually as a special event, and people would huddle around the TV in awe. It was comparable to watching the Super Bowl today. That's why it such a beloved movie after so many years.
When the commercials advertising this would start playing a week or so in advance, it was SO exciting! My mom would let us kids eat in the living room on TV trays the night it came on! It was a big TV & family event!
You could go back even further to 1934's "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable. A little risque for it's time and quite possibly the first "road movie", it's directed by Frank Capra and is one of only 3 movies which have won the Big 5 Oscars.
6:19 - that shot of Dorothy opening the door and seeing the land of Oz in color was all done in camera. The "black and white" shot of the door is actually shot in color with the door and walls painted to look black and white. The back of Dorothy's head is actually a stand in with make-up and costume to look black and white. When she opens the door we see the color outside and then Dorothy steps through the door - but this time it's Judy Garland in full color. Pretty simple but still one of the most famous shots in cinema!
Hey Shan, at 6:20 you got that right!! My mom saw this in 1939 at age 8 and she said the audience applauded and cheered at that unexpected scene. I think this was the first color movie at the time and released before Gone WtW, though there were colorized cartoons and FitzPatrick's Traveltalks may have been in color by then. From what I recall in documentaries about Oz is that the beginning and end scenes were also in color, but done to make it look sepia B&W for affect.
@ 16:11 That's the "That's the horse of a different color" the driver was saying, a play on the old expression "That's _a_ horse of a different color" denoting any kind of a change in someone, something or situation.
There's a documentary on the making of The Wizard Of Oz you would find very interesting.
More movie suggestions from around this time are Orson Well's masterpiece "Citizen Kane" (1941), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) another good Bogart film, and another Capra classic "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" (1939).
BTW, the reason "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." stands out for you is maybe, according to my mom who saw Gone WtW in '39 as well, that was the first time anyone heard a curse word in a movie!! (Hays code) She said the audience erupted in chatter at the curse word and applause toward Rhett for telling off Scarlett all at the same time. LOL! 😎👍
This is one of the rare examples where a film is considered the definitive telling of a story, even though it makes numerous significant departures from the source material -- in this case, the L. Frank Baum novel.
Return to Oz from 1985 might be my favorite. I love the darker tone and the genuinely creepy villains in there. It's not a musical btw so you don't have to worry about copyright 👌
Yep, I love that one too! Much closer to the books, as well.
Shan, please watch RETURN TO OZ from Disney from 1985!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't forget the new one: Oz, the Great and Powerful - a nice prequel.
@@minnesotajones261 did you like it? I thought it was really forgettable and I wouldn’t ever bother to rewatch it.
@@brittyn I did like it. Call me kooky - I love all the Oz sequels, prequels, etc. There's even a 1970s era cartoon by the guys that did Fat Albert called Journey Back to Oz - a cartoon musical with Liza Minelli doing the voice of Dorothy.
Absolutely love this movie. Just wanted to point out that the workers in the emerald city can give the lion a perm and even due Dorothy s eyes to match her gown but they don't fix the holes in scarecrow s shirt.
The song lyricist, Yip Harburg, wrote all the songs in this film, as well as a number of other well know popular songs of the era such as "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," "It's Only a Paper Moon, April in Paris," and all the music for the for a number of musical plays and movies including "Finian's Rainbow," which also featured a song about a rainbow titled "Look to the Rainbow." Harburg considered rainbows to be an important symbol of hope and were a recurrent theme in his work. His song "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" came out in 1932 and is the defining song of the Great Depression. So popular and so resonant was this song with the hardships of that time that it has been credited with tipping the election of that year against Hoover and in favor of FDR. Harburg is one of the towering greats in the pantheon of American music, but his songs are truly international in their appeal. At the end of the Cold War when Soviet puppet governments of Eastern Europe were being overthrown, the Romanians after facing violent government repression gathered in the Bucharest city center and sang "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" when they heard news of the execution of their hated dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. But of all of these, his Academy Award winning song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" remains perhaps his greatest masterpiece.
When I was a child, this movie aired once a year on tv. I think it was 1965 or 1966 that I first saw it. It was an event for sure...we got to stay up late, have popcorn and snacks....it was so exciting!!!! I still love it. Oh, on a side note, it seemed that they had problems with the "muchkins", after shooting for the day many of them would get drunk and cause trouble!!
Fun fact, The first full color photo was created by accident. Back the day their was a photographer that liked to use gels or plastic with different colors to get different effects. Later he started projecting his black and white photos with the same color gels. One day he took the same shot using a blue, Yellow and Red gel and later superimposed the image with the same color to backlight using gels. Magic, a color image was created. All color cameras and have light sensitive filters that divide images into a similar situation to make color images. Color TV for the longest time Had Red Green and Yellow light gun that would recreate color images using some for of this basic process.
Very Few people get the Oil can joke. When the call went out for little people back in 1937 , they came from all over the country and the studio assigned them to a hotel and it was the first time most of the actors ever saw anyone else like them selves. There were tales of crazy stories and debauchery. There is a movie that somewhat depicts some of the stories "Under the Rainbow" 1981
"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."
Wise words to live by. 😎 👍
Fun Fact: "Over The Rainbow" 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.
Maybe you could watch Robin Hood with Errol Flynn which is from the same decade
From that era I’d also recommend ‘Thief of Bagdad’ (1940)
There are so many interesting facts about this movie. One that I was shocked to learn recently was that the Tinman had to be recast because the original actor (Buddy Ebsen) was hospitalized after 9 days of filming due to inhaling aluminum dust from the makeup. When Jack Haley got hired, they changed the makeup to an aluminum paste instead.
1) The movie was shot entirely on a set.
2) The tornado was actually a woman's stocking.
The stocking was used just in the POV shot (Point of View) for Dorothy looking out of the window and seeing the funnel cloud under the house. The scene of the tornado in the farm field were composites of miniatures and rear projections. The Funnel Cloud itself was a seven foot piece controlled overhead with dirt blown from beneath the floor. The book, THE MAKING OF THE WIZARD OF OZ goes into the details. There are also videos on RUclips that illustrate how the Special Effects were achieve. While most were "Mechanical" effects, that term has taken on a new name, "Practical Effects."
Disney wanted to do an animated version of this movie since 1935, before MGM bought the rights.
Shirley Temple was considered for Dorothy before Judy Garland was chosen.
Buddy Ebson was cast as the Tin Man but left the project as he was allergic to the Tin Man Makeup.
Judy Garland was forced to take weight loss pills and barbiturates to make herself look thinner
The Munchkin actors got drunk and sexually harassed Garland on set.
When the Cowardly Lion made an appearance, Garland laughed at him and director Victor Fleming slapped In the face to set her straight.
Garland kissed Fleming on the cheek and thanked him
The scene where they run through the flowers, and Dorothy and the Lion start to fall asleep, they used asbestos to represent snow for the scene.
Fleming, Richard, Thorpe, King Vidor, and George Cukor all directed the film, before Fleming was named sole director.
It's weird that makeup causes so many problems with productions. Virginia Hey was forced to leave "Farscape" in the early 2000's because of her negative reaction to the makeup they were putting on her. It was actually causing serious kidney problems which resulted in renal failure at one point...
Shan,Technicolor was done with a giant camera that had 3 rolls of black and white film running simultaneously,each with a colored filter so it would record one color of the three primary colors.And the prints were kind of like lithography,with each color pressed like a rubber stamp onto blank film.
Lighting. Intense lighting.
@@jackasswhiskyandpintobeans9344 true.The set was so hot many of the actors in costume passed out!
@@anthonymunn8633 My interest in the process of the Techniclor process started when I watched a two-strip Technicolor film "Dr X." 1932.
You asked how much of it was shot on set. Likely all of it. Even the tornado is a background practical prop.
So glad you watched this one. I grew up near L. Frank Baum's hometown of Chittenango, and every year they have a festival dedicated to his works. Oz has always been a big part of my life, and I'm an enormous fan of Judy Garland. For me, this film is a fairly faithful adaptation of his work, but it's mostly about the incredible technicolor photography and the talent of the principal actors, all of whom were old vaudevillians. For a more faithful adaptation, I believe Walter Murch's underrated film "Return to Oz" is definitely worth a watch. If you like technicolor photography, you MUST see The Red Shoes (1948), which is arguably the finest technicolor film ever made, and arguably one of the best films ever made. I think it would blow your mind.
I love Return to Oz! I’m curious what Shan would think. That would be a great reaction.
It's wild to me, and honestly really touching, to see people who've never seen this react to a movie that's been part of American childhoods for about 3-4 generations now. I can't remember how I felt the first time I watched this, probably because I was really young.
LOL, the coach driver explained it - that horse is the Horse Of A Different Color. So every time you look at him, his color has changed!
Speaking of color, it was very important in the original story, and the filmmakers had to contend with it. In the book, Kansas is described as grey - everything, including the people, were relentlessly grey. But when they went to make the film, they realized they had to change that because in movies at the time, _everything_ was grey (in other words, black-and-white), so using grey wouldn't be a comment on Kansas. Thus, in order to make Kansas seem colorless in contrast to Oz, it was decided to make sepia the color of dullness and "old timey" reality.
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" is a line from "Gone with the Wind."
Judy Garland was also great in Easter Parade another musical she co star with Fred Astaire .To me it was the highest peek of Garland's career showing her acting dancing and singing ability in a classic blockbuster movie.
18:10 In 1968 the producers of "Planet of the Apes" contacted producers and special effects staff from The Wizard of Oz to get an idea of how to do the prosthetics for the apes in the '68 film! That's why it's interesting that you mention the two films when there really IS a connection!
I keep forgetting the older I get how different things are. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s it was almost impossible to have not seen this movie. You had to actively go out of your way to not see it. It would get played on TV as a special event once every year on Prime Time Television. Kind of like A Christmas Story during Christmas, But now an entire generation has grown up where that was not the case and you have to actively go out of your way TO see it. I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen this movie in my life, but a lot. After it stopped being played on TV I bought it on DVD and watched it a bunch since. That transition from Sepia Tone in the house to Color entering Oz NEVER gets old.
One thing though that just never occurred to me until the most recent time I watched it. When Glinda shows up she explains quote "Only BAD Witches are ugly." but the FIRST words out of her mouth to Dorothy are "Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?" Glinda was throwing shade at Dorothy like "*Snaps Fingers* Girlfriend you ain't all that! You got nothing on me!" in her own polite way, which is freaking HILARIOUS! 🤣
Whenever this happens to be on TV, my mom always talks about how, as a kid, it was pure nightmare fuel for her when the Wicked Witch of the West’s face suddenly appears in the crystal ball when Dorothy is calling out to Aunt Em. As a kid in the 50’s, I guess that was pretty intense. 😂😂🥰
I was a kid in the fifties and that crystal ball scene is still the first thing I think of when I remember watching. I feel your mom's pain.
You have to watch A Star is Born.1954. Judy singing and dancing "Swanee" is unforgettable. Also, check out Easter Parade. Judy with Fred Astaire. "A Couple of Swells" is a brilliant song and dance number performed on a moving stage.
Dorothy stepping out from a world of sepia tone to Technicolor is amazing. Judy's stand in (dressed in sepia) opens the door, (you only see the back of her head) then backs out of the frame, instantly replaced by Judy Garland in her color costume stepping through the door into Munchkinland.
The three-strip Technicolor process was used in this film and for many years which meant the camera had three reels of film rolling all at once required the camera to be very large and quite noisy so a covering was used to reduce the noise called a blimp which made the camera even more cumbersome. However when done right Technicolor films looked beautiful. Two other beautiful films in Technicolor are The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus.
Watch it again....Actually the whole plot line was...."Two women fight over a pair of shoes for over an hour and a half"...
Women!
Great reaction, Shan. This is a true classic and very entertaining.
"That's a horse of a different color" is an old American idiom for something unusual or if someone veers off topic to the discussion and you point out that it is irrelevant. In this case it became an amusing color-changing horse.
You did not comment on the plot, but I will share my take on the ending. While Dorothy's recovery was a relief to all, what she took from her adventure, spoken both to Glinda and her family, was that her interest in adventure beyond the horizon was squashed, which to me is sad. Also, the problem with Miss Gulch was not resolved - Toto was still slated for destruction (unless the tornado got the old woman). That is the only negative for me. You have a lot of great comments to go thru and history to appreciate here! Thanks for posting this, and all the work that went into it.
The problem about Toto at the ending always bothered me too, even as a child. We know Mrs. Gultch is going to come back for Toto, so the pivotal problem of the movie has not really been solved.
Also, Judy Garland-wise, watch her performance in "A Star Is Born." She's an exposed, raw nerve in that movie. Heartbreaking and vulnerable in ways that few actors of the 20th century could truly be. (And James Mason is equally as heartbreaking.)
She should have won the Oscar!
...as Groucho Marx wrote in a consolation Telegram to Judy Garland regarding her Oscar loss for 'A Star Is Born'...."the biggest robbery since the Brink's heist"!
Judy's best dramatic performance was in "Judgement at Nuremberg"
@@jamesalexander5623 But NUREMBERG was not a star vehicle as A STAR IS BORN was.
I saw this for the first time on tv as a child in the early 60s. I remember being fearful of the wicked witch and the scene where the stocking-ed feet of the witch of the west curled up and retreated under the house absolutely terrified me. Good times !
I love Technicolor films! There is just something about those old Technicolor films that digital can't replicate. It probably had to do with the hardship that the crew and actors dealt with. I just like super saturated color, like a colored etching.
Yeah, I find modern, digital films to be very harsh. There’s a softness to older films that is not found today, unfortunately.
Color film of the time required massive numbers of arc lamps for lighting and those limitations are why it was well into the 50's and 60's before most movies were in color as the technology of the film improved. Arc lamps are very hard to work with because the produce unbearable heat, lots of UV and use super high voltages that created additional dangers of fire, electrocution, and simply causing temporary blindness (welders eye) if exposed to it for too long.
@@larrybremer4930 Have you ever listened to the commentary track on "Doctor X." 1932. It's in two strip technicolor. It's a film that opened my eyes on technicolor. In the commentary he states that on scene they wanted to use manikins, but the heat from the lights was so intense the manikins melted so actors were used.
As a boomer born in 1962, this movie was an annual TV event that was every bit as important to a middle-American child of that era as birthdays and Christmas. The movie is very good, but it holds a special place in the hearts of many from that era.
Technicolor works by running three strips of black and white film through the camera simultaneously, each with different filters on the lenses.
They could were, after editing, combined onto a single strip of color film for projection.
12:38 Shan: 'Oil can what? That was funny.' Thank you. You're one of the few people who get that joke on the first take. 👌😁
When I was a kid, this movie came on once a year.. usually around Easter. It was appointment viewing. For being made in 1939, it's an astonishing film.
When I was a kid, we were stationed in Germany, and found out our next move was going to be Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Because of this film, I was half-convinced Kansas was going to be in black and white, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go.
“Surrender, Dorothy!” When I was a little girl back in the 50s and 60s I used to watch it on my black and white tv. when it would come on-once a year. I’d get so excited!!!!! Those flying monkeys freaked me out!! I loved the songs! I always knew it changed to color in OZ but couldn’t see it on my tv!
Technicolour was done by filming on 3 strips of different coloured film. So it was filmed in colour, with the house set, dress and makeup of Dorothy opening the door to Oz being actually sepia coloured, the Dorothy double stepping out of frame and Judy Garland stepping into frame
I adore the King of the Forest/Courage song. It’s adorable and hilarious.
All the songs (and their accompanying character-dances) are awesome. 🥰🥰🥰
The entire score was written for this film. Written by the talented team of Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, they were tasked to write an integrated score that advanced the plot of the film. So every song, including "Over The Rainbow," was specifically written for this film. "Over The Rainbow" became Judy Garland's signature song for the rest of her life.
The two doormen and the driver of the horse that changed color, the Wizard and the carnival man were all the same. The scarecrow who needed the brains always had the ideas, the tin man wanted a heart always cried. The lion beat up the guards did it with courage. They already have what they were looking for
6:20 Very cool visual effects hack here. They couldn't film both B&W and color at the same time so the room set is painted B&W. A body double of Garland is wearing B&W clothes. She steps off camera and Garland steps in wearing color clothes.
Every single frame of this movie was shot on the old MGM studio lot in Culver City CA.
All the songs were written for the film by Arlen and Harburg. MGM boss LB Mayer and other executives hated it - most specifically the barnyard setting - and ordered it cut, feeling it slowed the pace, but the composers held fast and the song is always at the top of the list of greatest film music performances.
And yes, Judy Garland’s Dorothy is the glue that holds this bright piñata together.
Thanks for your reaction!
tornado effect was done using a bunch of blankets and a rotating drum...
He created the tornado out of a wind sock that they use at airports. The whole tornado was made out of a wool cloth that was 35 feet tall. He mended the fabric with music wire so it would hold together when spun. Gillespie then attached the top of the tornado to the top of the sound stage to a gantry way that was across the top of the stage. He attached the bottom part of the tornado to a slit in the ground and then was attached to a car that moved along the length of the stage.
This film is truly timeless! Crazy to think it’s almost 85 years old.
I know it’s hard to believe
Lyman Frank Baum's gift to children: An Iconic American Fairy Tale.;)
Sometime in I guess the late thirties, at a dance convention, my talented mother, probably late teens, was an on-stage dance assistant for Ray Bolger. She would run her own school for about fifty years, passing away in 2013. She was a good teacher, choreographer, and costume designer. She helped probably thousands of girls improve themselves. Go Mom!
the horse you kept noticing in Oz was a "horse of a different color" that's why it kept changing.
The jacket Professor Marvel wears in the beginning was found in a thrift store when the props department was looking for a jacket that showed "faded elegance." When the actor put his hands in the pockets he found the nametag of the previous owner, L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz books.
The movie bombed at the box office in 1939 when it was released. It wasn't until years later that it earned money on re-release. The movie became a cultural phenomenon after shown on television.
Frank Morgan, who played the Carnival guy and the "Wizard," also played 2-3 other parts including the first doorman, and the soldier protecting the Wizard of Oz building, and was also the guy driving the colorful horse carriage and singing "The Merry Old Land of Oz." it was a sort of joke on the children in the audience if you didn't realize it until you were an adult. Frank Morgan was always hysterical in anything he played on screen, often playing some kind of failure of a con artist.
This is an absolute Xmas classic in the UK, its shown every year without fail. Interestingly the film was something of a flop on its initial release, and only gained classic status after it was broadcast on TV year in and year out. We did a production of this at school, the endless rehearsals means that the songs are absolutely burned into my memory.
Judy did 27 movies for MGM in 13 years sometimes working up to 72 hours at a time. Establishing that kind of legacy comes with a price she was an entertainer; it was all she knew, and she gave it her all until there was no more to give. I think she was a master at manipulating her facial and vocal expression to convey feeling and emotion. She could literally sing anything as close to perfect as you will probably ever hear. Her breath control is insane if you are serious about learning to sing listen to some of the earlier Judy garland it's a master class in vocal technique.
The first three-strip Technicolor feature film was "Becky Sharp" (1936), three years before Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.
You were wondering how difficult it was to perform in the Tinsman’s costume? Well, Jack Haley was a substitute for the original actor, Buddy Ebsen, who had filmed only a few scenes when he was sent to the hospital in reaction to the aluminum powder used in his makeup, which got into his lungs. They had to take a new approach to Haley’s makeup.
When I saw this as a child, it really did feel magical. I think it's not CGI, it's the production quality and whimsical nature. I wish modern films would remember that a well told story, with great production always works better than loads of CGI.
Technicolor was a two-color dye transfer process. The Technicolor camera capture two frames, one through a red filter and one through a blue filter, in turn before capturing the next two frames the same way. Dye transfer is a very rich color process, because the colors are actual dyes. The dyes of the inter mediate prints were physically transferred to the final print. That final print originated as black and white film and carries the soundtrack. There were earlier Technicolor processes back to 1919 that worked somewhat differently. The elaborate process was patented and became another way to say a film's color would be amazingly vivid. We still talk of such things as "technicolor" dreams. Kodachrome, a later Kodak process, was also a dye process, which accounted for it also fabulous color.
One of my favorite classics. I will only always be amazed by their tornado effect given what they had to work with. I once saw a "making of" and still am amazed. I know a giant stocking and large mirror were involved.
Other old movies that I will always love are "Rebel Without a Cause" & and "Its a Wonderful Life"
I think I remember reading somewhere recently that the tornado was created with a long tube of gauze or some sort of fabric.
This is where the saying comes, "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"... to depict any charlatans or sleight-of-hand or deceptions...
Ok so Technicolor works like this:
There is a prism inside the camera that splits the light into RGB. Each part of that is then exposed onto three separate black & white film strips. Each strip/reel is developed & printed & then the prints are passed through the appropriate color dye & when the three are then laid over one another, it produces a decent approximation of natural color.
Some interesting facts. The scenes shot in Kansas were filmed in sepia to represent the dry dull landscape of Kansas and then switches to Technicolor for the Oz scenes to showcase the magical beauty of Oz. When Toto escapes and runs home and jumps through the window if you look carefully the wallpaper has a poppy flower pattern to foreshadow the poison poppy field. During the filming of the scarecrow song and dance scene, Dorothy’s pigtails change lengths. There are many more interesting facts about this classic movie.
Victor Fleming is the credited director, but left to work on Gone With the Wind - two others worked on the movie. The film was shot entirely on sound stages at MGM, which today is Sony Pictures (Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are taped here). Cute reaction.
In the 1950s and '60s, "The Wizard of Oz" was shown on national TV only once a year, and millions of kids anticipated it and watched it every time. So there are quantities of people who are now old who recognize the different characters and can quote some of the famous lines. For us, this was a shared cultural experience. "I'll get you, my pretty - and your little dog, too!" "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!" "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" By the late 1970s, with the increasing use of home video recorders and the ability to rent films on tape, the "Wizard" showings ended and its influence diminished.
The horse was literally dipped in Jell-O to create the different colors. Many tidbits of lore. One of the actors received an old jacket that was found in a second hand store. There was a card or handkerchief in a pocket that showed it had belonged to the author L. Frank Baum. Buddy Ebsen was going to play the tin man, but he developed a horrible reaction to the toxic aluminum paint.
The actor who got the jacket was Frank Morgan, the man playing the Wizard. And Buddy didn't react to the paint. He reacted to aluminum _powder,_ which was dusted onto him like talcum and caused severe respiratory issues. When he was replaced, the makeup department also decided to replace the powder with an aluminum paste makeup, which is what was used on Jack Haley and did not cause those problems.
@@Serai3Thanks. I wasn't sure, so I didn't say. L Frank Baum's jacket ended up in the movie. 😊
The creation of the tornado was a huge, elaborate process. The final model was really big (30 feet tall) and it required a large structure to hold it up, and a track it could be moved on from above. It was remarkably successful in looking not only very realistic, but genuinely threatening as well.
The Wicked Witch only disappeared in a pillar of lame once as Margret Hamilton was very nearly badly burned during that sequence in Munchkinland.
Another bit of trivia is that "Somewhere of teh Rainbow", considered to be one of the greatest movie songs ever, was almost axed because the suits at MGM thought it was undignified for an MGM starlet to be singing in a barn yard..
While not technically the first color movie, it was certainly the movie that made technicolor the standard for the next 40 years.
The same year came out Gone with the wind. Another early color classic.
There are noticeable differences with the book but rarely an adaptation had been put on the screen such as you feel you are viewing the book, if not completely storywise, at least in the world and its feel.
The color parts of the movie hold up surprisingly well even in the make up and FX departement. In itself a small miracle given that the movie is almost 85 years old.
The song Over the Rainbow is so beautiful,.
If you can, do watch the MadTV alternate ending of the Wizard of Oz, simply hilarious.
Needless to say the impact it had on western culture. It truly is a classic in every single sense of the term.
I strongly suggest you watch an early Hitchcock classic. the 1935 spy film The 39 steps.
Absolutely fantastic. You won't regret it. Also his 1943 thriller Shadow of a doubt that he considers his favorite film he did.
The year before, 1938, The Adventures of Robin Hood was another notable early Technicolor film.
The Thin Man (1934) and The Women (1939) are two of my favorites from this time period. Actually, I love the entire 6 movie series of Thin Man movies.
You're right about the Tin Man costume. The actor originally hired for the part, Buddy Ebsen, had yo be replaced because he had such a severe allergic reaction to the silver paint.
Actually Ebsen was originally the Scarecrow, and Ray Bolger was the Tin Man. But they decided to switch roles. (I assume they had to get permission from somebody.) And then Ebsen reacted to the makeup. I believe it was the aluminum content, and was either toxicity or else just that his pores couldn't breathe. Anyway, he lost out on that role. He also lost out on playing Davy Crockett, because Disney spotted Fess Parker in the SciFi movie "Them," cast him, and demoted Ebsen to sidekick. But at least Ebsen got to dance onscreen with Shirley Temple, and play Jed Clampett and Barnaby Jones, and do a dance at his own 90th birthday party. Life is a mix of highs and lows.
It was aluminum dust that coated his lungs.
I grew up in the 1960s when network TV would broadcast this movie once a year. It was always a big event that every family in the neighborhood looked forward to... I especially remember watching it on a color television set for the first time!! That, and being utterly terrified of the flying monkeys!!
I believe that Dorothy's Ruby Slippers are enshrined in the Smithsonian Museum. Another side note is that the Professor/Wizard of Oz part was offerred to W.C.Fields who turned it down. And yes, usually sometime before or around Easter every year there are stations/channels that still show this film. I know I've seen it Dozens of times.
"Oh, they're back!" You noticed the abrupt transition from the WItch's castle to the WIzard's throne room, which even bothered me a bit as a kid. There was actually an elaborate musical number here (notice that there are no songs in act III?) which starts with the guard singing 'Hail Hail the Witch is Dead' and transitions (with a trombone slide) to the Emerald City with a reprise of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead (with a bit of The Merry Old Land of Oz), and ending with 'You're off to see the Wizard... Let him know the Wicked Witch is dead!" with the Emerald Citizens flanking our heroes as they head to the throne room through the tunnel. You can find RUclips vids with the soundtrack (which was preserved) and the few stills and a couple of seconds that were preserved in a trailer. The MGM powers that be cut it for time, and (as you noticed without realizing it) that marred the film. As the film stands, the big moment of the witch's death, the 'eucatastrophe' (as Tolkien put it), is pretty flat emotionally, and lacks the joyousness that it really deserves. All to save less than two minutes of run time. Interestingly, perhaps, with CGI, deepfakery, and re-recording, this scene could probably be nicely reconstructed and inserted nowadays, if someone wanted to invest the resources and the intellectual property quagmire could be sorted out.
Another Act III song, 'The Jitterbug', was also cut, but that's another story.
The jitterbug is actually referred to in the final cut of the film where the witch says, "I've sent a little insect ahead to take the fight out of them."
Yeah they cut and trimmed a lot of songs and dance numbers; Ray Bolger, one of the greatest dancers ever to grace Hollywood, had a whole extended dance sequence in If I Only Had a Brain that was cut from the film. It must have been so disappointing for him after he fought so hard to play Scarecrow instead of the role in which he was originally cast, Tin-Man; he specifically wanted to play Scarecrow so that he could dance full-out and not be held back by a constricting costume like the Tin-Man’s costume.
Fun facts: The Tin man, Jack Haley was a replacement for the original, Buddy Ebsen, who was hospitalized three days after starting because of the aluminum powder coating his lungs. The makeup was afterward altered to be aluminum paste. Tin Man's costume was so big that he had to lean on a board and would take naps there.
The Lion's costume was 90lbs, most of it was a real lion skin. The prosthetic was so much that he took his meals through a straw.
The Wicked Witch was burned badly when filming the disappearance. Her face and hand had 2nd an 3rd degree burns and it was a race against time to get her copper based makeup off because it would have burned her skin even more. Her stunt double was hospitalized when her broom exploded during a smoke effect. Margaret Hamilton had the softest spot for children having been a former kindergarten teacher. She was horrified that kids were scared of her, so much so that she appeared as the Witch on Sesame street in an episode that was never shown again because parents wrote in that she scared their kids. She appeared later on Mr. Rogers talking about how she gets into her costume and plays pretend. The Witch is listed as one of the top Cinema Villains of all time.
The cyclone was a muslin rig put into a track and spun at high speeds combined with dirt.
Over the Rainbow was nearly taken out of the movie altogether because producers felt it slowed the movie down. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed. It was written for the movie.
If you read the book you know the shoes were silver originally. They were made ruby due to Technicolor being a very new process. One pair of ruby slippers was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum and were found only recently after more than a decade lost.
And my favorite piece of trivia: The coat Professor Marvel wears in the beginning actually was made for L Frank Baum. They discovered it in filming and it was confirmed later by his widow and his tailor.
Three Strip Technicolor was the method used to process the films color sequences. To date, it is the most visually vibrant method of color processing. Jut LOOK at the striking reds and blues! The blue of the water in Munchkinland, or the glittering red of those slippers! There are other films in the 1940s that use Three Strip Technicolor and they are just gorgeous. Especially when the camera catches jewelry like rubies and emeralds!
Technicolor was actually around since the early 1920s. Douglas Fairbanks put it on the map and basically saved it from bankruptcy by using it for "The Black Pirate" (1926) (fantastic movie, like all of Fairbanks'). By 1939, there had been plenty of hit Technicolor movies, as well as many others released that year. ("Adventures Of Robin Hood" was the year before; "Drums Along The Mohawk", Private Lives Of Elizabeth & Essex" and "Gone With The Wind" were also 1939) That doesn't make that magic moment any less wonderful, but Technicolor was well-known by then, not to mention that they had been experimenting with color (and sound, for that matter) going back to the earliest days of film (1890s).
The "horse of a different color" was done by sponging different flavors of Jell-O powder onto different horses. They needed some kind of dye that wasn't toxic. The horses didn't cooperate since they would lick the sweet stuff off of themselves.
this was part of my childhood at Christmas or Easter when i was young i got sit down and watch wizard of oz. or Casablanca every year. i am glad you watched this as it gives good values in life and gives you a good feel inside. and you always will always say there is no place like home
"a horse of a different color" was an expression, this film made it literal.
This has been our family's Thanksgiving day movie for a few generations. I love how each generation of children love it like it was brand new. I could say how many times I've probably seen it, but I won't. I still love it every time. Great reaction and review. Thanks