The Wizard of Oz Movie Facts and More

        Sometimes finding a subject to write a newspaper column about can be challenging.
        There are weeks that I just absolutely agonize over finding a subject.
        I’ll roll a dozen a more ideas through my head.
      And other times, I can come up with a column and sit down and put it together with no trouble in 30 minutes.
        This is one of those weeks where I’ve been agonizing, debating and dwelling on a column idea.
        Should it be informational? Should it be a story about my own life? Should it be funny or serious?
       So while pondering ideas for this week’s column, and flipping through the channels on the television, I came across the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz.
          I’m well familiar with this movie as my wife is a serious Wizard of Oz fan and collector.
          She can quote most of the movie word-for-word. 
        I know if I’m struggling for a gift idea for her birthday or Christmas, I can find a Wizard of Oz gift and she’ll be happy.
        We have visited The Wizard of Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas twice in recent years and are excited to return again as they have added many new displays.
        The Wizard of Oz is one of the movies that in the end, you wonder if Dorothy really went to Oz and met the Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowedly Lion and melted the Wicked Witch of the West or was it all just a dream?
         I searched the internet and came across some oddities and facts about the famous movie. Here are a few of them.
        It’s a film that has remained in the pop culture spotlight for so long that it’s hard to believe it was released the same year that World War II broke out in 1939. 
          One of the early major technicolor pictures, the film was a big budget feat and one that won two Oscars and catapulted Judy Garland into the limelight.
         Many people think that The Wizard of Oz film was an original screenplay but it was actually adapted from L. Frank Baum’s children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The original print run was ten thousand copies but by the time it became public domain in 1956, it had sold more than 3 million copies. Following the books roaring success, Baum adapted the story into a stage play and introduced several new characters including a choros line of poppies. The play opened on June 16, 1902 at Chicago’s Grand Opera House. A 1903 New York production became one of the most popular Broadway shows of its time. 
         Because the film was among the earliest to be shot in technicolor, it required large sets with cameras hidden in different corners and elaborate lighting that rendered the set suffocatingly hot.
         “We had enormous banks of lights overhead,” said cinematographer, Harold Rosson, in The Making of the Wizard of Oz. “We borrowed every unused arc light in Hollywood. It was brutally hot. People were always fainting and being carried off the set.”
         People assume Toto was a male dog but she was actually a female Cairn terrier named Terry. And it turns out that The Wizard of Oz wasn’t the pooch’s first big picture. Prior to Oz, she had also appeared in Ready for Love and with Shirley Temple in Bright Eyes. For The Wizard of Oz, her salary was $125 per week, which was more than what many of the human actors received and was roughly ten times what minimum wage was at the time.
         The film including more than 600 actors which meant a lot of costumes. There were nearly 1000 in all and most were highly detailed and elaborate.
         There weren’t hundreds of ruby slippers, but Dorothy’s red shoes, each one made of leather, satin and more than 2000 sequins, were not one of a kind. In fact, there are at least four known pairs, one of which were recently recovered after a brazen theft from a Judy Garland museum in 2005.
        The Wizard of Oz is known for its unforgettable score but a few songs didn’t make the final cut including an original song called The Jitterbug which referenced the popular dance style at the time and was supposed to come as the group was making their way to the witch’s castle.
        MGM hoped the film would be a hit but nobody predicted it would capture imaginations for generations to come.
       “We didn’t know it was a classic,” said Jack Haley. “It was a job and we were getting paid and it was a lot of weeks of steady work.”
        Haley played the Tin Man.
       There’s a lot more out there about The Wizard of Oz and I hope your curiosity about the movie will cause you to dive in and learn more.
        Hope you have a great week and remember that Good Things are Happening, every day and always!