Dorothy's iconic red slippers now live at the Smithsonian Institution, and are so popular that the carpet in front of the attraction has had to be replaced numerous times due to wear and tear.
During the "Wash and Brush Up Co." scene, the lyrics "We can make a dimpled smile out of a frown/Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown" are sung in counterpoint to the orchestra playing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow."
During the haunted forest scene, several actors playing the Winged Monkeys were injured when the piano wires suspending them snapped, dropping them several feet to the floor of the sound stage.
For the film's 1998 theatrical re-release, Warner Brothers was considering editing the extended Scarecrow "If I Only Had A Brain" sequence into the movie (it was deleted from the film before its 1939 premiere) but ultimately decided not to.It is available as a supplemental feature on the Warner Bros Special Edition DVD of the film.
If you look closely, the door the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion rescue Dorothy through isn't the same as the one Dorothy enters the Hourglass Room through. This is due to the deletion of an entire scene in which the room the heroes enter (following the sound of someone humming, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow") holds not Dorothy, but the Wicked Witch of the West! She paralyzes the heroes, then creates a false Rainbow Bridge from that room to Dorothy's. She sends a Winkie out to test it... he falls through the center of the bridge. She then magically compels our three heroes to call out to Dorothy, who runs onto the bridge... and is carried across by the magic slippers! Our friends are reunited, and (released from the witch's spell by love/the slippers, whichever) run out of the room, with the witch screaming, "Stop them!" behind them. (The scene was cut both for technical reasons... they couldn't pull off a good Rainbow Bridge... and because seeing a Winkie falling to his presumed death was considered too risky in the days of the Hays Commission.)
In 1898, Dorothy Louise Gage was born to the brother and sister-in-law of Maud Gage Baum, wife of author L. Frank Baum. When little Dorothy died exactly five months later, Maud was heartbroken. Baum was just finishing "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and, to comfort his wife, named his heroine after Dorothy, changing her last name to Gale in his second book. Dorothy Gage was buried in Evergreen Memorial Cemetery in Bloomington, Illinois, where her grave was forgotten until 1996 when it was rediscovered. When Mickey Carroll, one of the last existing Munchkins from the movie, learned of the discovery, he was eager to replace her deteriorated grave marker with a new one created by his own monument company. The new stone was dedicated in 1997 and the children's section of the cemetery renamed the Dorothy L. Gage Memorial Garden, in the hope that bereaved families would be comforted in thinking of their lost children as being with Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz".
In 1939, Montreal lifted its law restricting minors under 16 from admission to theaters, presumably without an accompanying adult. This lift was done exclusively for this film and apparently sent a rush of children to theaters, according to a 1939 issue of Variety. Earlier that year, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs unsuccessfully attempted to lift the ban.
In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #10 Greatest Movie of All Time.
In Jim Steinmeyer's 2003 book "Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear", Steinmeyer notes of Harry Kellar: "Kellar was almost certainly the inspiration for the wizened Wizard of Oz described by author L. Frank Baum; he was America's leading magician when Baum's book was written".
In the earlier drafts of the script, the writers often created new incidents to liven up the story. The original idea was to turn the story into a slapstick musical comedy, so there were a few deviations from what was written in the book. Some of the earlier scripts included a son for the Wicked Witch of the West whom she wanted to put on the throne of Oz, a stuck-up niece for Miss Gulch, a rescue from the Wizard's balloon by the Munchkin fire department, a singing princess and her cowardly suitor who gets transformed into a lion, a rainbow bridge that the witch constructs as a trap for Dorothy, and a romance between Dorothy and one of the farmhands. When the script got too bogged down, however, writers Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf would turn to L. Frank Baum's book for inspiration, and the result was closer to the whimsical fantasy Baum had written.
In the first take of the scene when the Wicked Witch of the West leaves Munchkinland, the smoke that was supposed to go up around her came early, and started forming before she stepped on the platform she was supposed to be on. On the second take, part of Margaret Hamilton's cape became caught in the platform when the burst of fire appeared. Her make-up heated up causing second- and third-degree burns on her hands and face, and it was later discovered that one of the key components in her make-up was copper. The producers used the first take. You'll notice the early appearance of the red smoke.
In the song "If I Only Had A Heart", the girl who says, "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" is Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Many of the Wicked Witch of the West's scenes were either trimmed or deleted entirely, as Margaret Hamilton's performance was thought too frightening for audiences.
MGM had originally planned to incorporate a "stencil printing" process when Dorothy runs to open the farmhouse door before the film switches to Technicolor; each frame was to be hand-tinted to keep the inside of the door in sepia tone. This process-cumbersome, expensive, and ineffective-was abandoned in favor of a simpler and more clever alternative (a variation of this process was used, however, in 1939 release prints of The Women). The inside of the farmhouse was painted sepia, and the Dorothy who opens the door from the inside is not Judy Garland but her stand-in wearing a sepia-rinsed version of the famous gingham dress. Once the door is opened and the camera advances through it, Garland (wearing her bright blue dress) walks through the door and the audience is none the wiser. This effect does not work on older video/TV prints where the Kansas scenes appear in true black and white, as the changeover to color is all too apparent. With the Kansas scenes returned to their original sepia tints, however, they closely match the magical opening door and the effect is powerful.
MGM paid $75,000 for the film rights to L. Frank Baum's book, a towering sum at the time.
Multiple styles of ruby slippers were tested by the MGM wardrobe department before they settled on the low schoolgirl-style pumps with bows. One proposed style had curled up toes, known as the "Arabian" slippers (created by designer Adrian), which now belong to Debbie Reynolds. Another proposed style, the "Bugle Bead" shoes, are without bows and have yet to publicly surface. An entire book was published with trivia and history of the numerous test styles: "The Ruby Slippers of Oz" by Rhys Thomas (Tale Weaver Publishers, 1989) Thomas speculates that there were seven pairs, and the whereabouts of five are known. Each has an estimated value of $1.5 million, making them the most expensive Hollywood memorabilia. They have been dubbed by some as "The Holy Grail" of all Hollywood nostalgia. One pair was sold to Hollywood memorabilia collector David Elkouby for $666,000.00 in a May 2000 auction. The pair in the Smithsonian are mismatched.
Nikko, the name of the head winged monkey, is the name of the Japanese town which houses the shrine featuring the famous Hear No Evil/See No Evil/Speak No Evil monkeys.
On March 18, 2010, on Celebrity Jeopardy (_"Jeopardy!" (1984)_), the contestants were Cheech Marin, Aisha Tyler, and Anderson Cooper. The final category was Authors, and the clue was: In 1890, he witnessed a mild cyclone in Aberdeen, South Dakota, fodder for his most famous novel. The answer was L. Frank Baum (which none of the contestants got right.) While revealing the answer, Alex Trebek also revealed that that film had been "filmed right in this studio lot."
Originally contracted for six weeks, Margaret Hamilton ended up working for 23.