![]() Yet if you review the original footage, it still feels like something is off. This is the version that is now considered the definitive cut, the one you’ll likely have seen on television. The bird appears in a different place to where it first appeared. When The Wizard of Oz was re-released in 1989 for its 50th anniversary, the confusing footage had been cleaned up. This supposed myth is complicated further by the multiple versions of the film that exist. It is said that as the trio began skipping down the road, the crane unfolded its wings defensively, casting a strange shadow in the background. The studio’s official line has long been that what looks like a little person swinging from a tree is actually a shadow cast by a large crane, hired by Fleming, along with other animals from the Los Angeles zoo, in an attempt to make the forest seem alive. ![]() The burns on her legs never healed.ĭelving deeper into the film’s murky backstory, there is one urban legend that repeatedly surfaces: that an actor who played a Munchkin can be seen hanging themselves during the scene – which has come to be known as the Tin Woodsman sequence – where Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man skip down the Yellow Brick Road bound for the Emerald City. Her stunt-double, Betty Danko, subsequently spent 11 days in the hospital after the ‘broomstick’ she was sat on – basically a painted smoking pipe – exploded. Once recovered, she returned to work under the proviso she would no longer have to work with fire. Wicked Witch Margaret Hamilton also spent time in the hospital, suffering second-degree burns on her face and third-degree burns on her hand. The man originally cast to play the Tin Man, Buddy Ebsen, ended up in an iron lung after his silver make-up, made up of aluminium powder, got into his lungs. Mayer later referred to the 16-year-old as his “little hunchback”, and in 1947, less than 10 years after her breakthrough role, Garland tried to kill herself for the first time.ĭarkness abounds in The Wizard of Oz. ![]() Of course, the film is also notorious for exacerbating both Judy Garland’s use of amphetamines and barbiturates – prescribed to her at the behest of Louis B Mayer in order to increase the young star’s productivity on set – and her self-image issues. Released 80 years ago, Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz is best remembered – and indeed beloved – for its pioneering use of Technicolor (in Baum’s book, Dorothy’s shoes are silver, not ruby they were changed to showcase the new colour motion picture process) and for composer Herbert Stothart’s Oscar-winning score.
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