The Wicked Witch of the East was crushed by Dorothy's house after the tornado scene.
Watch it again.
Did anyone ever hear of the "Hangman Scean."
It's an urban legend (http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/ozsuicid.htm):
Here's a fact that some people MAY NOT know...
When the Wicked Witch (Margaret Hamilton)
disappears from Munchkin City, she disappears in a puff of smoke...however....Ms. Hamilton caught on fire and since the paint on her face & body were flamable (and toxic)...she received some burns on her body.
I THINK Frank Morgan was drunk on the set a lot.
Buddy Ebsen was the original tin man but had to quit because he was allergic to the silvery makeup and suffered a collapsed lung.
Ironic thing here...Jack Haley....who later played the tin man...suffered a heart attack then died.
The 1995 soundtrack I own includes two songs that didn't make it into the final cut of the film.
1."The Jitterbug" -This number was considered inappropriate as it broke the tension of the film (It was an upbeat number.). I've heard the only remaining footage is from home movies that someone shot while filming this scene. Info?
2."Ding-Dong! Emerald City"-It was led off by the Winkies singing of the witch's death. On the movie screen, their refrain dissolved into a scene back at Emerald City, where several villagers wearing green danced Dorthy and the others back to the wizard's palace. Is there any surviving footage?
I found out other little tidbits thanks to this cd's booklet. Does anyone know if there was a new version of this soundtrack made when the movie was recently rereleased on video?
I did that Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead was first sung & was redubbed in post production. Who discovered that Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon works as a soundtrack if you start playing it at the moment of Leo's last roar?
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead *was* redubbed in post-production -- because the munchkins were actually singing Ding Dong the >B*tch< Is Dead when they first filmed it.
I tried the Dark Side of the Moon experiment once. The only really remarkable thing I noticed was that the black-and-white changes over to color at exactly the same time the original side one of the album ends and side two begins. Also, near the beginning, Dorothy is balancing herself on the fence during the lyric "balanced on the biggest wave."
My school did a play of this & it included a jitterbug dance sequence.
Was it the Munchkins or Toto doing the jitterbug?
It should have occured just before the flying monkeys took Dorethy away. In the movie, the Witch's line: "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them" refers to the Jitterbug.
My school did that play too, and I was in the pit. That was fun because I got out of classes for the play. :) Yep, I gave about two months of free time to be able to get one day off. It was worth it.
Well, Judy Garland sings "The Jitterbug". So it would be Dorthy and gang.
In my school play the Jitterbugs hypnotised Dorothy & co. with their dancing & where saved when the Sorceress of the North turns up. Also the book has some other creatures who guard a hill or something, it's so long since i read it.
Did anyone see TNT's broadcast of The Wizard of Oz this weekend? What made it unusual was that it was simulcast with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album. This was supposed to prove or disprove the urban legends about the album and the movie.
Did anyone see it? Did anyone listen to the simulcast? If you did, how accurate are the urban legends?
Unfortunately for me my cable company didn't air the SAP. So I didn't hear "Dark Side of the Moon".
That whole "Dark Side of the Moon"/"Wizard of Oz" thing is pretty hard either to prove or debunk. As an example, try this experiment. Pick any favorite album of yours at random and play it in conjunction with any random favorite video. Odds are that over the forty-or-so minutes, you'll see at least a few instances where the action on the screen seems to appropriately fit the music or lyrics of whatever you're listening to, even if this is only your own perception. What puzzles me is who thought of doing this specific instance in the first place. I envision a late-night stoner party ("Hey, dudes! Let's watch the Wizard of Oz but turn down the volume and groove to some Floyd!") More easily dismissible is the idea that the band originally recorded the album to jibe with the movie, which seems ridiculous on the face of it.
After people have actually tried the experiment I suggested above, maybe we could each list our favorite album/movie combos?
I once noticed that the soundtrack to Cosmos fit almost exactly with the issue of Elfquest I was reading while listening to it.
When I was a child in the late 60s/early 70s, I had a soundtrack LP. I'm sure it was from the movie's soundtrack, not recreations or stage productions. On it was a song sung by the Wicked Witch which (no pun intended) was not in the movie. It's not one of the unused songs released on newer soundtracks.
Does this ring a bell with anybody?
Ding, dong,..........
It is very ironic that Buddy Ebsen, who nearly died due to the makeup, is now the only one left alive; the five principals are now deceased.
In the scene where the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man are going to rescue Dorothy (my fave in the pic, BTW) you can see the box for the Lion's tail mechanism under his lion suit.
Richard Roeper's first Urban Legends book discusses the Oz/Dark Side of the Moon thing in some detail, including a scene-by-scene list of all the various parallels.
He comes down more or less on Todd's side: The similarities are too many to seem coincidental...but why Pink Floyd would bother is yet to be answered. After all, this was well before they could have just fired up the ol' VCR and recorded along with the video! The process of paralleling an already-released movie in the 1970's would be a much more awkward - and costly - business.
I tried it once. Didn't think it was *that* astronomical. I had no problem writing it off as a coincidence.
Now these things are popping up all over. On the web somewhere, someone has a page linking Williy Wonka and Rush's 2112 album.
Some people just have too much time on their hands.
Was just watching The Wizard Of Oz tonight and for the first time ever it occured to me,wasn't the Wicked Witch of the East a bit STUPID keeping a bucket of water so close at hand if she melted
so easily?
Lucky for Dorothy she missed the balloon trip with the Wizard,after all he does say he doesn't know how to steer the darn thing!
Since all of the people in Oz represent people that Dorothy knows(e.g.Professor Marvel=the Wizard,and the farmhands=the Scarecrow,the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion)who does Glinda represent?
Or is Glinda a hint that it was a bit more than a nasty dream as Auntie Em and Uncle Henry state? Interesting but in contrast to the movie in the book,if I remember correctly,it really WASN'T a
dream.
It was the Wicked Witch of the West that got the bucket of water thrown at her.
The Wicked Witch of the East was crushed by Dorothy's house after the tornado scene.
Watch it again.
Salman Rushdie in a book essays brings up a nit I'd like to answer. At the end, Dorothy asks, "Why didn't you tell me how to get home?"
Glinda replies, "You wouldn't have believed me."
That might not seem very plausible given the other amazing things which happened to her.
But there are several answers.
For one, the movie is a dream, and Glinda's response is Dorothy's subconscious' reply, and the subconscious mind doesn't care about plausibility.
Next, the way to get home is so easy compared to the difficulties Dorothy had before, Dorothy might be sceptical that getting home would be so easy.
And, Glinda and the others wanted Dorothy to stay long enough to kill the wicked witch, something the others couldn't do for various reasons.
I read an essay on how this story was supposedly a metaphor for the capitalist/socialist economic policy discussions around the turn of the century. The Yellow Brick Road represented the gold standard, or something.
Littlefield's "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism" idea (which, it should be observed, started as a pedagogical illustration, not as an actual assertion of authorial intent) has been repeatedly debunked. The most thorough example of which I can think was in an article in the Spring 1992 Baum Bugle. Unfortunately, my Bugles are currently 2200 miles away from me, but there appears to be some information about the article in the IWOC FAQ
Saw the end of this last weekend, & a thought occurred to me. The witch sets Scarecrow on fire, which Dorothy puts out by dousing him with a bucket of water. Some of the water hits the witch, who then dissolves. Why did the witch have a bucket of water out in the open like that anyway, if it was so lethal to her? She should have at least put a cover on it, so it wouldn't accidently spill.
(Of course, all this happens in Dorothy's head, so that could explain the nit.)
It is very ironic that Buddy Ebsen, who nearly died due to the makeup, is now the only one left alive; the five principals are now deceased.
Well, not any more.
Why did the witch have a bucket of water out in the open like that anyway, if it was so lethal to her? She should have at least put a cover on it, so it wouldn't accidently spill.
The water was apparently for putting out torches, theoretically something the guards would be doing, rather than the witch herself.
Maybe she just enjoys living dangerously? (Er, make that "enjoyed")
I don't mean to inject some common sense into this film, but how could water be lethal to the witch? Didn't she ever need a drink of water? Beyond the issue of dehyration, it would also be plain nasty if she never took a bath!
it would also be plain nasty if she never took a bath!
Well, she was green. The only other witch we see wasn't. There was probably nothing left under the moldy crud, so when the water hit her and started cleaning, she just vanished.
the five principals are now deceased.
Well, not any more.
Did one of them come back?
If memory serves, while talking with Professor Marvel Dorothy refers to her "Aunt Em" and the Prof helpfully supplies "Emily". The idea is that the Professor is trying to seem all-knowing---he knows that there is practically no chance that an American woman would be formally named "Em", so he offers the "real" name "Emily" (which would be, to Dorothy, both unfamiliar (though obvious to an outsider) and known to be correct). This was always very clear to me growing up---after all, I have known several Emily's; that was clearly Aunt Em's Christian name.
But. . .today I check the NameVoyager. It transpires that there is another name for which "Em" could be short---"Emma". The fact that I know none is simply a consequence of growing up in an era of atypical unpopularity of the name. In fact, as of 2005 Emma was the second most popular female name for girls (right after Emily). In the first decade of the last century, when the book was published and (one assumes) the movie set, Emma was the 21st most common name, and Emily the 101st most common. In the 1930s (when the movie was made) Emma had dropped to 86th and Emily to 170th. Until the 1950s, Emma was a much more common name than Emily in the United States.
So. . .how did Professor Marvel know Aunt Em's name? If he didn't know, guessing "Emily" would have been foolish because "Em" was much more likely to be short for "Emma".
Did one of them come back?
"Well, Big Bird, they're dead; they can't come back"
When Toto climbs on Dorothy's bed at the end, he is facing Dorothy's right in the long shot, but to her left in the close-up.
Did he have time to turn around?