M-G-M MEETS L. FRANK BAUM! (Part Three)

by John Fricke

[Above: The Wicked Witch of the West – as incomparably incarnated by Margaret Hamilton – is actually on-screen for comparatively few minutes in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s motion picture of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Her overwhelming impact, however, has everything to do with the power of the actress herself . . . and the fact that the movie script made her a much more pivotal character than the Witch played in the OZ book itself. (Many people are astonished to discover that the oh-so-wicked-one appears in just one brief chapter by original author L. Frank Baum.) As shown here, the WWW is making her third appearance in the film, caterwauling threats at Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and Toto from the roof of the Tin Man’s cottage.]

---------------------------------

Note: This is the third installment of our 2024-2025 blog series, celebrating the 85^th anniversary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s classic 1939 film version of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Each month -- through next June and sequence by sequence -- we’ll compare the content of that 1939 motion picture with author L. Frank Baum’s original story of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ (first published in 1900). This entry discusses Dorothy Gale’s initial meetings with a couple of unique Ozians who would become two of her closest friends on the journey to the Emerald City; please read on to find out what MGM left in, crossed out, or added to Baum’s plot!  😊

During an episode of her 1963-64 television series, Judy Garland was shown with guest Bobby Darin in a setting that suggested a railroad car. The two eventually launched into a 14-song “traveling” medley, but they first indulged in some scripted patter to discuss their destinations. With tongue-firmly-in-cheek, Judy explained, “I’m going to Oz.” This brought knowing laughter from the studio audience, as did her subsequent clarification, “I don’t always take a train . . . I usually go by house.” In part one of this series, we discussed Dorothy’s first cyclonic trip to Oz; part two introduced her and Toto to the Good Witch and the Munchkins. Now we join the little Kansas girl and her dog as they continue by themselves down the Yellow Brick Road. (They’re “accompanied” here by multiple illustrations from the first edition of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, drawn by W. W. Denslow.)

After leaving the Munchkins -- and according to Baum’s text -- Dorothy walks for “several miles” and then stops to rest, sitting on a fence that bordered the road and enclosed “a great cornfield.” Her reverie is interrupted when a nearby Scarecrow suddenly winks at her (it was a less politically correct era), and as you’ll read here, their meeting continues on the printed page much as MGM would recreate it several decades later. (It’s worth noting that such respect for an original author has never been an outstanding Hollywood trait!)

The Scarecrow offers, “How do you do?” and Dorothy acknowledges, “I’m pretty well, thank you. How do you do?” The Scarecrow sighs, “I’m not feeling well . . . it’s very tedious being perched up here . . . this pole is stuck up my back. . ..” Such wholesale incorporation of conversation continues through, “Do you think if I go to the Emerald City with you that Oz would give me some brains?” and “If Oz will not give you any brains, you will be no worse off than you are now.” Finally, just before they go off together, the Scarecrow confesses, “There is only one thing in the world that I’m afraid of . . . it’s a lighted match.”

The movie, however, doesn’t discuss Dorothy’s subsequent lunch break, as Baum has her and the Scarecrow sit down at a little brook near the road. She tells him about Kansas, with a passing reference to how gray it all is; he wonders why she would want so badly to return there, given the beauty of Oz. In turn, the girl quite capably extols the concept that “there is no place like home.”

The Scarecrow then shares the story of his creation by a Munchkin farmer, although once the straw man is propped up in the corn field, he quickly and dejectedly discovers he is unable to do the job for which he was purposed: to scare the crows.

A wise old bird consoles him, however, and describes the necessity of brains. Such words motivate the Scarecrow, and when Dorothy and Toto come along, he leaps at the chance to join their party.

They continue on, although the road gets rougher. By the time night falls, they’re deep into a dark forest. (As with all but one chapter of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ book, Denslow provides an illustrated and hand-lettered page prior to each coming adventure:)

It’s mentioned that (however conveniently) the Scarecrow is able to see in the dark, and he guides Dorothy to a small, deserted cottage just off the Yellow Brick Road. She and Toto swiftly fall asleep there, while her stuffed friend stands patiently in the corner and waits for the dawn.

Baum is quick to point out that Dorothy searches for a spring of clear water every morning, so as to bathe and to provide something to drink with the bread and butter she’d packed in her basket before leaving the Kansas farmhouse where it landed in Munchkinland. Before the trio can return to the road, however, a distant “deep groan” leads them further into the forest. Upon inspection, they find a “motionless . . . man made entirely of tin.”

The rusted tin man is able to speak in a sad voice, and the ever-sympathetic Dorothy willingly accepts his directive to return to the little house where she spent the night. It’s his home, and “You will find an oil can on a shelf in my cottage.”

Once oiled, the Tin Woodman -- the latter by trade and “a very polite creature . . . thanks them again and again for his release.” When he hears about their journey, however, he asks, “Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?” and he tells his own story as they rejoin the Yellow Brick Road. He offers that he’d rather have a replacement for his missing heart than a brain, as he was once a real man who’d fallen in love with a local maiden.

She had agreed to marry him but was employed by an old woman who didn’t want to lose the girl as a servant. So, the woman promised the Wicked Witch of the East “two sheep and a cow” if she would prevent the marriage. The evil sorceress enchanted the Tin Woodman’s axe until, piece by piece, he had unavoidably chopped off or away his entire body. Yet in each instance, a local master tinsmith replaced arms, legs, torso, and head with substitutes made of tin. In the end, however, the Tin Woodman had no heart; he could no longer love; and he forsook the Munchkin girl. He continued to chop wood for his living until caught in the rainstorm that rusted him, and as he stood “groaning for more than a year,” he had time to realize how happy he’d been while in love. Thus, he tells Dorothy and the Scarecrow that he now resolves “to ask Oz to give me [a heart],” and then plans to “go back to the Munchkin maiden and marry her.”

-------------------------------------------

Before we see how MGM handled all the foregoing, here are two more examples of the sterling design work done by Denslow for that first edition of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ more than 120 years ago. In addition to the chapter openings and color plates (samples of which are shown above) he also created art that -- throughout the book – creatively crept around and even beneath the printed words. The first page below textually and pictorially offers the Scarecrow’s dialogue with the old crow, while mischievous other birds prepare to decimate the corn field. On the second page here, Baum offers the philosophical words of both the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman as to the respective rationales behind their hopeful requests of the Wizard. Dorothy also expresses again her longing to return home -- while Denslow’s “underneath” Woodman glistens and achieves a pose unencumbered by type.

When making their film – and as mentioned above -- MGM followed the Baum template for these encounters with reasonable fidelity: Dorothy meets the Scarecrow. Dorothy and the Scarecrow meet the Tin Woodman (albeit “Tin Man” in Metro’s on-screen terminology). Of course, the massive movie studio added its own seasonings, and although only two sets were utilized, both the cornfield and the amalgamation of cottage and orchard/forest were spiced up. There were songs, special effects, plot twists, and musical comedy performance; Metro even tossed in an additional conflict for Dorothy in their immediate “screen-time” transition between Munchkinland and her convergence with the Scarecrow. It was a literal and figurative crossroads:

This made for an ideal segue to active conversation between the girl and straw man; no “hep” winking for this Scarecrow! It also provided a timeless (and ever-more resonant) spoken declaration for the latter – i.e., “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?”

They sit down, and while he doesn’t tell the backstory of his creation as in the book, he jovially and limberly reveals his plight – first in dialogue and then in song-and-and dance:

Onward they then go in a duet that segues to the next set. (With Toto, too.) This transition directly offers several MGM “decorations” to the saga. The trio is ebullient as it advances on an apple orchard; yet one tree limb stretches across the road, and there’s unseen danger and drama lurking behind its trunk: the Wicked Witch of the West is skulking and slithering in the background.

The sun never seems to set, at least in the first half of MGM’s OZ, so Dorothy doesn’t need to seek the nearby cottage for an evening’s respite. She does, however, face hunger, and the next MGM addition is the interchange with the two apple trees. (This may well have been adapted from a later episode in Baum’s book, where a row of fighting trees endeavors to keep Dorothy & Co. from entering another forest they need to traverse. The Scarecrow – as drawn here by Denslow – gets the worst of that encounter, but as per his statement in the text, “It doesn’t hurt me to get thrown around.”)

In another low-key but expert MGM transition, the gathering of the apples propels our Kansas protagonist to discover the Tin Man and his oil can.

His backstory here is limited to an explanation of how he became rusted, and when he’s oiled, he’s complimented: “Well, you’re perfect now.” He parrots: “Perfect? Bang on my chest, if you think I’m perfect.” The subsequent echo and lament -- “No heart?” “No ‘haht’.” -- is a direct cue for a song.

And dance!

This makes for another spate of limitless joy, given the performing savvy of Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Judy Garland, Toto, and special effects wizard Buddy Gillespie (ah, that compressed air and talcum powder!). But peril is never even as far away as around the corner; in this case, it’s right there, up on top of the Tin Man’s cottage. Though it’s another very brief appearance, Hamilton’s Wicked Witch makes her presence felt to-the-max. She’s sarcastic about Dorothy, warns off the two men, and heartily foreshadows her later fire attack before “smoking out.” (Please see the photograph at the top of this blog.)

Undeterred, however, the Scarecrow and Tin Man vow their allegiance, and there’s a quick nod to Metro’s revamping of Kansas characters into Ozian ones as Dorothy’s ponders, “Somehow I feel as if I’ve known you all the time. . ..” They decide, however, that the important thing is that “we know each other now!” And it’s off they go, up the Yellow Brick Road and into the forest.

My apologies for the quality of the image above, but it was the closest I could come to a shot that included our stars and the (definitely unbilled) character moving upstage between the heads of Dorothy and the Tin Man.

That, my cherished Ozzy friends, is a crane. A Sarus crane. Rented from Los Angeles Zoo Park to give the effect that all of this action is taking place in an orchard and forest – not in a giant, airplane-hanger-sized sound stage in Culver City, California. (Courtesy the Park, there’s also a live toucan on the overhanging branch when Dorothy and the Scarecrow first stroll into this setting – and a peacock wandering about after they get acquainted with the Tin Man.) As further “proof,” here’s a closer view of a Sarus crane, doing the same kind of flap and wing expansion as can be seen up-screen in this sequence of THE WIZARD OF OZ:

So, please . . .. “Pay no attention to the” rumors CONTINUALLY spread by the bozos out there who unabashedly screech, “THERE’S A HANGING MUNCHKIN IN ‘OZ’!” Not to be unqualifiedly psychological, but such reports seem to me to stem from the dark, dark, dark corners of “I need attention! Look at me! Look at me! I’m going to say ugly things!”

Well . . . sorry, guys (not at all), but it’s a crane – even though the otherwise-myth has gotten increasingly tackier and foul across the last five decades. It’s gone from the simple (and possible) idea that it was a stagehand moving around upstage who got caught in the shot . . . to a stagehand who hung himself . . . to an MGM executive who hung himself because OZ was costing the studio too much money (and he would be blamed for it) . . . to a young actress who hung herself because she didn’t get the part of Dorothy . . .  to a middle-aged Munchkin gentleman who hung himself because 16-year-old Judy Garland wouldn’t date him . . ..

And now, with all the clarity of the new film restorations that OZ has enjoyed in recent years, that upstage movement can clearly be seen to have a silvery/gray sheen to it. So – pay attention; here’s the MOST current idiocy -- it’s now claimed to be a middle-aged Munchkin gentleman who hung himself because 16-year-old Judy Garland wouldn’t date him . . . but first he wound himself up in yards and yards of Reynolds Wrap.

Forgive me, please, but all those theories are -- you should pardon the expression -- for the bird[s] 😊.

See you next month when the Cowardly Lion makes his debut – along with some way-back, Baum-book, scary inspirations that didn’t make it into the MGM movie. L. Frank, after all, didn’t have the hovering Hamilton to supply his drama!

And, as always: here’s my sincere thanks for reading.

Article by John Fricke