The Making of The Wizard of Oz“Fantastic.” Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books
“Grand.” Ray Bradbury, Los Angeles Times
“Definitive.” Salmon Rushdie, The New Yorker
“A fluent, incisive and fair history of life in Hollywood during the golden age of films. The author seems to have talked to everyone with knowledge of what went on at MGM in its heyday. . . . Marvelous.” Publishers Weekly
From the ten scriptwriters at work to the scandal headlines of Munchkin orgies at the Culver City Hotel to the Witch's (accidental) burning, here is the real story of the making of The Wizard of Oz. This richly detailed re-creation brings alive a major Hollywood studio and reveals, through hundreds of interviews (with cameramen, screenwriters, costume designers, directors, producers, light technicians, and actors), how the factory-like Hollywood system of moviemaking miraculously produced one of the most enduring and best-loved films ever made.
We watch it happen--the bright, idiosyncratic, wildly devoted MGM-ers inventing the lines, the songs; flying hordes of monkeys through the sky; growing a poppy field; building the Emerald City (and 60 other sets); designing and sewing the nearly 1,000 costumes; enduring the pressures from the front office; choosing the actors.
Here is Oz, a marvelous, unprecedented experience of studio life as it was lived day by day, detail by detail, department by department, at the most powerful and flamboyant studio Hollywood has ever known--at its moment of greatest power.
Aljean Harmetz is the author of The Making of Casablanca, On the Road to Tara: The Making of Gone with the Wind, and other books.
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Contents
1 The Studio 1938
| 1 |
2 The ScriptS
| 25 |
3 The Brains the Heart the Nerve and the Music | 61 |
4 Casting | 101 |
5 The Directors
| 135 |
6 The Stars and the StandIns
| 167 |
7 The Munchkins
| 187 |
8 Below the Line | 205 |
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Common terms and phrases
Academy Award actors Arlen Arthur Freed asked auction Baum Baum’s Bert Lahr Betty Danko Billie Burke Broadway Buddy camera color contract costume Cowardly Lion dance director Dorothy Dorothy’s dress Ebsen Emerald City film final find fine finished fire first five floor Gillespie girl Harburg Hollywood Jack Haley Judy Garland Kansas L. B. Mayer Langley’s later LeRoy’s look Love makeup Mamoulian Margaret Hamilton Mervyn LeRoy MGM’s midgets movie Munchkins never night Noel Langley office picture play producer Production 1060 Ray Bolger remembers Richard Thorpe Rosson ruby slippers Ryerson says Scarecrow scene screen script shoes shot Singer song songwriters stage star story Stothart studio Technicolor Thalberg theater there’s thing Tin Woodman told took tornado Victor Fleming Vidor wanted Wardrobe Department Warner Bros week Wicked Witch Witch’s Castle Wizard of Oz Woolf write wrote Yellow Brick Road York