the making of the wizard of oz by aljean harmetz

The green makeup for the Wicked Witch contained arsenic, the tin man’s face was slathered every day in aluminum and asbestos was used not only for fireproofing costumes but as snow in the poppy scene. Some ideas can be pretty horrifying in retrospect.

Of course there was no CG at the time but there was plenty of ingenuity. The parts on music, sound and effects are particularly good. It wasn’t until it was released about 20 years later to CBS television for yearly showing that it began to develop its now widely accepted reputation as a classic. Russell Maloney of the New Yorker called it a “stinkeroo.” The reviews of the time were very negative. It had 10 screenwriters (hired and fired in succession) and 4 different directors. It was never expected to make a lot of money as the “prestige” movie for MGM that year, and indeed it lost about $1,000,000. The final cost was $2,777,000, expensive for the time.

Beyond the jobs there are many interesting descriptions of the making of this beloved movie. Mayer, the jobs of producers and directors at the time, how the film writers were hired and their working conditions, the songwriters, the actors (stars to small parts) and technical and carpentry jobs. Frank Baum in 1900, to the power of Louis B. The Making of the Wizard of Oz is a very comprehensive description of how all the jobs worked together, from purchasing the book written by L. The older producers and studio heads were also gone, but many people had memories of working under them in “the studio system.”

In 1938-39 when the movie was filmed it was “just another job.” Judy Garland was gone, but she’d become very bitter, addled and an unreliable source anyway by the time of her death. Uniformly, they were surprised at the ultimate success of the film and their own popularity 40 years on. This allowed Harmetz to interview primary sources. When this book was researched before its publication date in 1977, quite a few of the people associated with the movie were still alive.

The making of the wizard of oz by aljean harmetz