Cursed Films (2020) s02e01 Episode Script
The Wizard of Oz
1
What have you heard
about the legends
surrounding the making
of "The Wizard of Oz"?
- Um
- I mean, there's just
so many rumors in general
about "The Wizard of Oz".
- Oh, we could talk
about that all day.
I mean, I've researched
this stuff
since the time I was
a little kid,
- I'll get you, my pretty.
- Definitely heard about the
burning of Margaret Hamilton.
- Yeah. Oof.
- You know, she caught fire
once unintentionally.
- I definitely know
of the makeup situation
that happened with the Tin Man.
- Heard about the Munchkin
hanging.
- I've heard that a small
person hung themselves on set.
- The list goes on and on
and on and on and on.
I think it's a part
of the legacy
I think that when
some people look at films
that are super beloved
and they hear stories
about the difficulties
or the tragedies
that happen on set,
they then go on to ascribe
that production as "cursed",
because it's hard to hear
these stories of tragedy.
And you want to believe
that at least someone
or something is in charge
because the reality is
no one's in charge
and the universe doesn't
care about you,
but that is too crushing
to encompass with our minds.
So, we come up with ideas like
that production is cursed,
'cause it makes us feel
a little bit better
about the terrible things that
might have happened on the set.
When I was five,
I sat down and watched
"Wizard of Oz".
Everybody had a great night,
but I had the life changing
experience.
The characters and the fantasy
and the songs,
but I just kind of bought into
all of it.
You don't choose these things,
they choose you.
And that's a statement that
I think anybody watching this
who has any kind of passion
for anything can
can comprehend.
What "The Wizard of Oz" is about
is not a question I have
actually considered.
And that's amazing to me.
- There are lots of theories.
People thought that
the Yellow Brick Road
was something to do
with the gold standard.
Society had been through some
really difficult times
with the depression
and then the war.
People were forced to move
all over the place.
And then we still had lots
of first-generation immigrants
who'd come in
in the 1910s and 20s.
They had to leave their homes
and knew they would never
be able to go back.
Here was Judy.
She was disrupted.
She was off in a whole 'nother
world,
just like the population
of the country.
And the whole tension
was "she couldn't go home".
- Close your eyes
and tap your heels together,
three times.
- But suddenly through magic,
she is able to go home
and she is sort of
like a surrogate
for the American population.
- There's no place like home.
They went out of the movie
with some sense of redemption.
At least Judy got home.
I think it's about the way
in which human beings
trust each other
to lead each other
through the world.
Yeah.
'Cause the Wizard's
not inherently a bad guy,
but he has a lot of power.
And power corrupts.
That's absolutely true.
It was made in 1938
and it opened in August 17th,
1939,
and America was at the cusp
of a World War.
- Go, fly! Fly!
- Fly! Fly! Fly!
And that dark energy,
it was part of the air they
were breathing at that time.
That beat of war was going on
in the background.
I mean, and they
so much made it real
with the Winkies marching
like Nazis.
"The Wizard of Oz"
was a hopeful outcome
of that dark energy
because the witch is dead.
Dorothy gets back to Kansas.
The objects themselves
associated with the production
still have that power
over people
and an object like
the Ruby slippers
is a perfect example of that.
I've seen people just break
down in tears,
coming into this room
and seeing the ruby slippers
in real life.
You know, Dorothy Gale
is a stand-in for anybody
who's ever thought about
wanting more out of their life
or being unhappy
with their circumstances,
seeking something
over the rainbow.
Having an object in front of you
that represents that,
it's actually very powerful.
"Wizard of Oz"
was a very difficult shoot.
There were conflicts
and re-castings
and accidents
and script problems.
- They wanted to make
a realistic film
that was a fantasy.
All of the characters suffered
through the costumes.
Dad had to eat every meal
through a straw.
The lighting was so intense.
They were dying under
those costumes.
There was a fire marshal
on the set at all times
with a light meter
going around to make sure
the set wasn't going
to catch on fire
from the heat of the lights.
There were 14 writers
and five directors
and three choreographers
and a potentially
fatal accident,
a potentially fatal reaction
to makeup.
I would imagine
you'd have to ask
any number of the cast members
who worked on "The Wizard of Oz"
if "The Wizard of Oz"
was cursed or not.
And if you asked Buddy Ebsen,
he might tell you, yes.
His participation was cursed.
Originally Buddy Ebsen
was cast to play the Tin Man.
And he was a very popular
film actor of the time
known as the song and dance man.
And he would've been a perfect
fit for the film.
The makeup was pretty basic.
They used clown white
and then they dusted it
with ground up aluminum.
He found that he was starting
to have cramps
in his fingers, or in his feet.
And then one night
it spread to his arms
and his legs
and he could not breathe.
- They were putting silver
paint on him
and they didn't realize it,
you know,
he was being poisoned.
He had been inhaling
the aluminum particles,
you know, that floated around.
They had coated his lungs.
- He went home one night.
Couldn't breathe.
Ended up in the hospital
with pneumonia
in an oxygen tent.
Unfortunately, his
participation in the film
was cut short.
And it ended up being a film
that kind of scarred him
in a way too.
Um, literally scarred his lungs
uh, because he had a tendency
toward bronchitis
for the rest of his life.
- In the early 2000's
I had a show called
"MythBusters"
and we were doing a story we
called "The Goldfinger Myth".
And it's about the actress,
Shirley Eaton,
who got painted gold
in the James Bond film,
supposedly got suffocated
by the paint.
Which she didn't.
But as part of the research
for that myth,
we came across the famous story
from "The Wizard of Oz"
that Buddy Ebsen was originally
slated to play the Tin Man.
And couldn't because
he was poisoned
by the silver paint
that they put on him
to play the Tin Man.
When we first started
to look at doing a story
about "The Wizard of Oz",
there are a few avenues
to that negative affect
and one is poison.
So, if Buddy Ebsen was poisoned
by lead in the paint,
we-we can't test that
on ourselves.
But the other main reason given
for the difficulty
with the paint
was that it cut off the oxygen
that you breathe
through your skin.
And if you paint your whole body
um, you will somehow suffocate.
That is testable by us.
The suffocation is something
that we can creep up on.
We have an EMT on set.
We can make sure our pulse
oxygen levels are up to snuff.
And that is the aspect
of the story that we tested.
- This is the exact stuff that
they were using on the Tin Man.
Which was just pure
aluminum powder.
Now, why are you guys
feeding her oxygen?
- Her heart rate's gone up.
When most humans think
about being Buddy Ebsen
in that moment, oh, you get
to play a Tin Man.
So, they're gonna build this
elaborate costume around you.
And then they're gonna
paint you silver.
These are all the activities
of like,
the best day ever
for a 10-year-old.
And I think every one of us
intersects with that of like,
that sounds incredible.
And when you add on to that,
the idea of being poisoned
by effectively the highest
level of play, um,
that's exactly the kind of
juxtaposition
where people wanna
keep telling that story.
I think it is
certainly plausible
that Buddy Ebsen could
have had lifelong effects
from the makeup on
"Wizard of Oz".
On every single story
we did on "MythBusters",
we were working with chemicals
that could affect us
in a negative way
and we had to be able to talk
to the insurance company
about how we were going
to do it safely.
That's definitely not something
that I think was
going on in the 30s.
The snow in
the poppy field sequence
was made of some derivation
of asbestos.
Nobody thought that
this was damaging.
They were doing things
the best way they knew how,
80 years ago.
And they were doing them
as safely
as they thought they could.
A lot of the special
effects that were used
in "The Wizard of Oz"
were experimental.
They were put into
"The Wizard of Oz"
for the first time on film.
- Buddy Ebsen was a guinea pig
for a new kind of makeup
and it cost him the film.
There was another rumor
that the Munchkins
were all drunkards.
During the filming
of "The Wizard of Oz"
most of the Munchkins stayed
together at this hotel.
The rumor is that while
they were here,
they carried on in a
less-than-civilized fashion.
This hotel will always be known
for the residence of most
of the little people
when they made the movie
uh, in 1938.
It's strange,
but I can almost hear
the Munchkin sounds
because more than a hundred
of them stayed right here
in this hotel.
I'm sure there were
a few parties.
There have been
stories for years
that there were wild sex orgies,
that the Munchkins went crazy.
I used to hear this as a kid.
- Come on here, Larry,
let me tell you.
- You can tell me.
There were roughly
124 little people
playing the Munchkins
and the stories
about the orgies,
the drunken parties,
the misbehavior,
tend to be painted in the
broadest strokes possible
and incriminate 124 people.
There were maybe a half a dozen
or 10 who were rowdy.
And there were things
that did happen.
- One of the Munchkins
brought a gun to the set.
A sort of a notorious little guy
by the name of Charlie Kelly.
He was jealous over his ex-wife
and she was dating another
little person.
He didn't get fired though.
They just made sure
he didn't return with uh,
another pistol.
I have to ask you about
- Of course.
- all the rumors that
have come out
and the rumors are that
all the little people
got drunk every night.
- Nah, that's so
- No.
- That's stupid, really.
They didn't.
- Where do you think these
rumors came from, then?
- The great Judy Garland.
On a TV special in 1967,
Judy Garland said the Munchkins
on "The Wizard of Oz" set
were-were drunks.
There was nothing like
the drunken stories
that Judy Garland sort
of pinned on them
in one of her inebriated moments
on the "Jack Parr Show".
- They were drunks.
- They were little drunks?
- And they put them all
in one hotel room.
Not one room,
one hotel in Culver City.
- Yeah.
- And they got smashed
every night.
And they'd pick 'em up
in butterfly nets.
Because it came
from Judy Garland,
I think people may have thought,
well, she was there.
She would know.
As much as they loved
Judy Garland,
and they really did,
the Munchkin actors had
to suffer with that story
over the years.
Um, and they-they
weren't happy about that.
- As much as I love Judy,
when she made that statement
on "Jack Parr Show",
Judy had a couple of bells
in her,
and she was trying to be funny.
And when you're trying
to be funny,
and you don't know what to say,
you're gonna pick on
the little people.
- Now I've heard stories
- Don't you believe it.
- Really?
- That's what they all hate,
them, them stupid stories.
- That was not true.
- You mind if I say somethin'?
If I were 6-foot-tall,
I'd-I'd go to every one
of those guys
that wrote those stupid things,
you know, it was awful,
I'da grabbed up against
the wall and said,
"You know what you did?"
Bam!
- The Munchkins got really
irritated
by questions like that.
Rumors of sex orgies.
- Oh, that's a load of BS.
- While there probably
were parties,
it was nothing like
what was portrayed in the movie,
"Under the Rainbow".
"Under the Rainbow" is
a great, great, great movie
and very misunderstood.
But true movie buffs know
the truth about it.
- Hey guys, this is
Gregg Turkington
with the Victorville
Film Archive.
- And I have five copies
of that, but I brought one.
This is "Under the Rainbow".
This is sort of
the definitive making
of "The Wizard of Oz" movie.
If you like Chevy Chase,
this is one of his best movies.
And of course, Carrie Fisher,
we all love her as Princess
Leia,
but she shone bright,
not only in "Star Wars" movies,
but also here,
in "Under the Rainbow".
The true story of the Munchkins.
I'm Steve Rash.
I'm director of a film called
"Under the Rainbow".
The film turned out
to be about um
the Munchkins tearing
up the Culver Hotel
during the filming
of "The Wizard of Oz"
with a story overlaid
about a secret service agent,
a paranoid duke and duchess,
an assassin,
a Japanese spy,
a German little person spy.
- I, I didn't think people
would believe
that the Munchkins would be
swinging from the chandeliers,
and would tie up
the hotel manager,
and run amok.
They probably thought
that it wouldn't perpetuate
it that much,
but it did.
I had not seen
"Under the Rainbow"
in at least 20 years.
This last 12 or 14 hours
since seeing it again
after 20 years
has kind of shaken me.
I thought we were more advanced
in 1980 than this.
I was quite disappointed
at how racist,
how sexist,
how elitist
it conceptually was.
Probably some other "-ists"
as well.
Did that bother me
the day that I shot it?
I don't think so.
It bothers me like Hell today.
The only fabulous thing
about the whole experience
was meeting and working with
over a hundred little people.
In retrospect,
looking at the way
we were portraying them,
um, they should have revolted.
This film seems to believe
that anything a small person
does is funny,
and of course, that's not true.
- You know, I agree with you.
And one of the things
that bother me
about the use of the little
people in this movie
is that at no point
were any of them,
except for Billy Barty,
as the spy,
dignified by being made
into characters
who had personalities.
It felt a little bit
like a train wreck,
but I was the conductor.
This is probably rationalization
because so many little people
had a wonderful experience
and made a lot of money.
I hope that makes up
for the fact
that we really didn't deal
with them
in a truthful way.
We tried to do it in a fun way
and you know,
some people think
it's hilarious.
Um, I don't anymore.
Are you a "Wizard of Oz" fan?
- Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Some of the people who made it
in retrospect
may have felt bad about it.
Everything that can happen
on a film
happened to that film.
The joy you see on the screen
in "The Wizard of Oz",
that was an illusion created by
an awful lot of people
working awfully hard.
The studio really was a factory.
There were 500 carpenters,
15 plumbers,
two dozen blacksmiths,
one barber,
one shoe-shine boy,
and one man in charge
of the lions.
The actors and actresses
were workers in that factory.
Mom was born
in Cleveland, Ohio, 1902.
She taught in the Boston
public schools
while she pounded the pavements
in New York.
"The Wizard of Oz" was casting.
They had thought of looking
for a beautiful witch.
She said, well,
that does it for me,
but subsequently they
changed their mind
and they wanted a quote,
"Ugly witch".
And mother said,
"Well, of course
they would've thought of me."
And she got the part.
And the-the rest was history.
People are shocked to realize
that Mom was on the screen
in "The Wizard of Oz"
only 12 minutes.
Of course, her presence
dominated the whole film.
- I remember being
incredibly scared
of the witch.
They knew what they were doing
when they cast
Margaret Hamilton.
Maybe they didn't realize
just the impact that
she would have though.
A big concern of hers
was that the kids would
believe it.
- How nice to see you,
Mr. Rogers.
- I'm so glad to see you.
I'd like you to know
my television friend,
Miss Margaret Hamilton.
- How do you do?
And so, she spent a lot of time
trying to convince kids
that she was a kind old lady
and that was a witch
on the screen.
And that was make believe.
And they shouldn't be afraid,
- Would you try on a dress
like the one you had on?
- Yes, I'd-I'd love to.
- To show us?
- I think that would be fun.
But she tried to stress,
especially on "Mr. Rogers",
that it was just an act.
- There's your old friend,
the Wicked Witch of the West.
- How did s how did she talk?
- Well, she talked like this.
It's very nice to see you.
In the 30s and the 40s,
safety conditions
were not so great.
And uh,
Mom was badly burned
in the picture.
It's a scene where she
has arrived
in the Munchkin Village.
- When you see her entrance
into Munchkinland
in the smoke,
it's not Margaret Hamilton.
It was her double, Betty Danko.
But they wanted Margaret
to do the disappearance.
They wanted to get it
in one shot.
They wanted to make it
look real.
So, they weren't using
her double for that.
And it was a complicated shot.
Margaret Hamilton was talking
to the Good Witch and Dorothy,
and she had to deliver her line,
"I'll get you and your little
dog, too."
- I'll get you, my pretty,
and your little dog, too!
And whirl around
and get to that
elevator platform.
The elevator was very small.
So, she had to hit
her mark, exactly,
pull the broom straight up,
pull her elbows in
so that she could drop cleanly
through the floor.
Say the line, back up
just the right amount,
get on the platform,
pull everything in.
The smoke came up
and she dropped down,
huge burst of real flame,
But they let the fire
effect go too quickly.
And the broom caught on fire
as did the hat.
She was severely burned.
She was immediately
smothered with blankets
to put out the fire.
What she ultimately
ended up having
was third-degree burns
on her hand
and second-degree burns
on her face.
Now compounding that,
her green makeup
was copper based,
and heated copper
could begin to eat
into her skin.
They had to take her off
to the side of the set
and clean her face,
her pores completely,
of that green makeup.
And they used rubbing alcohol
and they had to press down
on these fresh burns.
Uh, Margaret Hamilton said
she could never,
ever forget that pain.
And the doctor salved her up,
wrapped her up like a mummy,
and they sent her home.
She was very concerned
what my reaction
was going to be.
I was three years old
at that time.
She called ahead to my nanny
and said,
"Look, I'm coming home.
Tell him that I have
a new costume.
I'm gonna look
just like a mummy.
And I'm really excited
to show him this costume.
And as soon as we get home
and I get in bed,
you have to bring him in
so he can see this."
And I still remember being
brought into her room.
And here was Mom
bandaged everywhere,
particularly all over her face
with this couple of slits
for her eyes.
And she said, "How do you like
my new costume?"
And I said, "Gee,
that was kind of neat."
And she handled
that whole situation
so that it was never
any trauma for me.
When she did go back
six weeks later,
the first thing they
wanted her to do
was a flying scene on the broom
with the smoke
coming out behind.
They said, "Maggie,
we just have this broom
with a little gasoline engine
on the back."
She was filming
a sky riding scene
and they positioned a
a pipe that would blast fire,
right beside uh
where she sat on the broom.
- The wardrobe man brought up
a costume to her
and said, "This is your
fireproof costume."
- She went, "Whoa."
- She just refused.
She says,
"I'm not gonna do it."
- So, Margaret Hamilton's
stunt double,
Betty Danko,
agreed to do the scene.
Betty Danko got in
the costume, the makeup,
put her on the broom,
started the wind machines.
Told her "All right, action,
push the button, Miss Danko."
And she pushed the button
and the smoke mechanism
at the back of the broom
exploded.
- That thing blew up.
- She went one direction
The broom went the other
direction.
There were flying metal pieces
that embedded in her leg.
And she was in the hospital
for a while.
Any kind of legend, good or bad,
is going to travel.
The important thing though
is to separate the legend
and the myth from the truth.
The only way in which
the film is cursed now
is the way all of that
has been expanded upon,
and enlarged, and lied about.
And this has been
going on for decades.
I think it's yellow journalism
to the max.
If I were just somebody
who sat at home
and watched "The Wizard of Oz"
for my own pleasure
and heard the legends,
I would say,
"Well, gee,
maybe those are true.
Gosh, did that really happen?
Fuck!"
The most famous of all
"The Oz" legends
is one of the earliest ones
that there is a Munchkin
who hung himself on the set,
and you can see him
in the background
hanging and swinging.
I've got some curses
for you if you
if you wanna know.
Someone showed me a um,
a couple of feet of film
that was allegedly once
part of the cut
of "The Wizard of Oz"
that had been removed
when they learned
that that dark spot
up in the upper
right-hand corner,
is a Munchkin who hanged
himself from the lighting grid.
Um, I saw the black blob
that was supposedly
the dead Munchkin.
When was this?
- During the filming
of "Under the Rainbow."
I wasn't interested enough
to get out a magnifier
and-and check the validity.
I bought it.
Good story.
- It went from being a
stagehand caught on camera,
to a stagehand
who was depressed,
and hung himself on camera,
to an MGM executive
who was so despairing
of how much
"The Wizard of Oz" was costing
that he hung himself on camera,
to an actress who hung herself
because she didn't
get the part of Dorothy,
to a Munchkin who hung himself
because Judy Garland
wouldn't date him.
I get this from grade school
kids
and I don't mind it from
grade school kids,
but it's when adults
who come up to me
to say, "You know, there's
a man hanging."
And it's like
Basically, one of
the Munchkins hung himself
on the set of
"The Wizard of Oz".
Fortunately, it was very far
in the distance
and it wasn't even noticed
at the time of the release.
It wasn't until some real
true blue film buffs
who watched the movie
enough times
happened to notice it one day.
- There's a conspiracy within
"The Wizard of Oz"
that a Munchkin, um,
hung himself in the background
during one of the scenes.
You see it right there
on film, on certain copies.
- Like what the fuck's
goin' on over there?
It's not on every copy.
You have to have the
collector's editions.
This is the one you wanna own,
because this is the only place
to actually see
the original hanging
Munchkin footage.
And of course, uh,
it's priceless,
so, I was very,
very glad to acquire it
uh, from this uh, dealer.
- Oh no, he didn't
know what he had!
If he knew what he had, he
wouldn't have sold it to me.
That, that, that we know
to be the truth.
Now, this is an edition
that collectors love, also.
It's the 50th anniversary
edition.
Unfortunately, with this,
they did find the alternate
footage with the,
the bird from the LA Zoo
and they replaced uh,
the-the hanging Munchkin
footage with that footage.
- We tried to get uh,
like, the original copy.
It's the oldest copy we found.
It's literally VHS.
And like I said, this is
the re-mastered version,
that now, they say it's a bird.
And in the original version,
it straight up looks like
a Munchkin.
Like a Munchkin.
- Munchkin.
- Munchkin.
I'm gonna show you both versions
of "The Wizard of Oz",
of the, of the hanging
Munchkin scene,
which is one of the most
iconic in
"The Wizard of Oz" history,
if not motion, picture history.
Okay, here go, we're off
to see the Wizard now.
You see that?
That's a, that's the bird.
Let me freeze this.
You see what is obviously
an exotic bird, like an emu.
They found a big, exotic bird.
I don't know what the breed was,
but it was a similar size
to the Munchkin.
They put that bird in the same
corner of the room.
This was, is sound stage
number two.
And they shot the same scene,
but with a bird flapping around
and replaced it in most prints,
except for the print
that leaked out.
And this is the one
collectors wanna see.
This is the suicide
of the anonymous Munchkin.
Never been identified.
Never will be. Um.
- There!
Pfft! Dead.
His neck, neck is snapped
instantly in a hanging, so.
Look at that, swinging back
and forth. Dead.
People have shared
the footage on YouTube,
and some of these sorts
of bootleg sites.
Because of the times
in which we are our living,
there is a very "worthy" soul
who has doctored the footage
and posts it on YouTube,
as if to say,
there, you can see
it is a hanging Munchkin
and this is what it
used to look like.
And when the rumors
started to go around,
MGM took this out
and dropped in a-a bird.
Now it really is a bird.
- That's the bird they
photoshopped in, man.
I have no problem debunking
a conspiracy theory.
Like, the whole Keanu Reeves
being a reptilian.
You know, I've pretty much
debunked that one.
But this one,
I'm telling you guys, man,
it's-it's for real.
- If you watch the original,
it's for real.
- The bird is not in the
original copy.
The bird is in the remade copy,
and they put the bird there
to make people say, you know,
oh, it's a bird.
It's hangin' right there.
Now, that is not a bird.
There's no wings,
and it's rockin' back and forth.
I mean, it's there.
I think there is a great danger,
not only because it's
inaccurate or disproportionate,
but because it is omnipresent
in today's world
of looking for dreck and dark.
There is just an essential
purity
about the "Oz" story
and the "Oz" film.
It was at a time when
Judy was so excited
about making that picture
and so delighted to be
making that picture.
She was thrilled.
It was well known on the set
that if Judy cracked up
at something,
you had to take five minutes
to let her laugh it
out of her system.
And when it came time
to do her first scenes
with Burt Lahr in the movie,
these were the scenes where
they meet the Cowardly Lion
in the forest and he goes
after Toto.
- I'll get you, anyway, Peewee.
And Judy rescues,
Toto - picks up Toto
and slaps the Lion,
- Wah!
- And Burt Lahr starts to cry.
- What'd you do that for?
- Well, they could not
get this take.
They did it two or three times.
And every time Burt Lahr
started to cry
with the waterspouts
built into his wig,
and the water pouring down
and him doing his whole
cowardly lion bit.
She would crack up.
- She would break up every time.
It is in the film.
She picks up Toto,
and she's starts to laugh,
and she pulls the dog over
in front of her face.
It is heaven,
and it's in the film.
- She couldn't stop laughing,
take, after take, after take.
- It was an expensive picture.
You know, they were running,
they had to get the scene done.
And finally, after three
or four takes of this,
Victor Fleming took her
behind the set
behind one of the trees
and he gave her a smart,
little smack across the face.
If that's how he handled things,
well, it's too bad
he had to slap her.
He didn't punch her.
He didn't beat her.
It was just a sharp,
little, you know, "Come on.
Come to.
Get with it here".
- Well
if-if that's what happened,
that's what happened.
Um, you know, um
I don't know what else
to say about that.
Was it the right thing to do?
Well, no,
probably not,
but what are you gonna do?
You've gotta get
the picture made.
It was coded into her
to want to please,
to try to give out all
the love she had inside her
in hopes that it would
come back to her.
She said,
I always felt unwanted.
And she wasn't being overly
dramatic when she said it.
She found out that her mother
had tried to have her aborted
and a doctor friend of theirs
warn them against it.
So, the mother tried
everything she could
to induce a miscarriage.
This is somebody who
didn't have the protection
within herself or in the people
who were supposed to be
taking care of her
to withstand the concrete mixer
that Hollywood could be.
When my mother started
"The Wizard of Oz",
she was 15, when she started it
and she finished it
when she was 16.
Your body starts to change.
The character of Dorothy
of course,
was even younger in the book.
And they wanted my mom
to look like a child.
They said, "You can't gain
any weight".
She had no idea that the studio
had asked some of the doctors
who worked at the studio,
to give her what they called
energy pills and or pep pills,
so that she would keep
that childlike figure.
Pep pills are names
for a gradity of barbiturates
and prescription drugs.
The young pill addict can move
from sedatives like Doriden,
"red devils"
to amphetamines.
- That would cut her appetite
and that would give her
a little bit of energy.
And then when my grandmother
said she can't sleep at night,
then they gave her
a sleeping pill.
And they didn't go out
to harm her.
They didn't what
they were doing.
They had no idea
about addiction.
They had no idea about how
this would harm people.
She developed
a dependency on them
that nobody knew a dependency
was probable.
I've never blamed the studio
for what happened to my mom
as far as the addiction
that encompassed her adult life
because the-the studio
would never go out to harm
its biggest money maker.
You were a product.
The actors were never really,
truly thought about as people.
They were part of the factory.
We know that the studio
did harm.
We know that now.
We know that amphetamines
and we know that sleeping pills,
you don't give that to kids.
We know that.
They didn't know that then.
And even if they did,
would they have cared?
I don't know.
I don't know.
They got around the child
labor laws.
They, they did harmful things.
My mother had breakdowns at MGM
because she went from movie
to movie, to movie,
to movie, to movie.
She never had a vacation.
But again,
I don't think you can blame
people for ignorance.
We all now know about the world
of addiction.
They didn't.
When I started to
dabble in the world of cocaine
and alcohol,
I realized that once I found out
about my family history
that I fit right in.
And now that I've been
sober 34 years,
I think to myself,
that's why this happened.
It happened to her.
It happened to me.
And it was incredibly fulfilling
to find out that I didn't
have to blame myself.
And I didn't have to blame her.
And that I learned to forgive.
But you don't have
to learn to forget.
You hear all these
stories in Hollywood
and no matter how
you phrase it, you know,
it is something
that is kind of sad.
But part of what I love
about Judy is that she,
throughout her life,
references this time
as being the happiest
that she ever was
and how she constantly
was always trying to search
for that kind of rainbow again.
As far as Judy goes,
I-I know that this was
one of her,
you know, her best memories.
But I feel like
her experience was
much like Hollywood
has always been.
"The Wizard of Oz"
the reason I love it so much,
I have to say that that is
because of her performance.
Who she is in that movie
draws you in as a child,
and she got me hooked.
So, because of her,
I became obsessed
with this movie
and seeing her other films,
I just fell in love
with her more and more.
Do we remove some
magic from a narrative
by busting a myth
about that narrative?
I submit, no.
I submit that no one ever minds
knowing more about a subject.
You can certainly
demystify things
and still celebrate them
at the same time.
I take it as axiomatic
that humans, as explorers,
are evolutionarily driven
to find the truth of things.
We have always sent
our best and brightest
to the edge of the known
to report back what they find.
While some people may complain
that in telling the true
stories about some narrative
we're somehow reducing
some of its magic.
I don't think that's true
for most people.
I wouldn't necessarily attach
the term "cursed" to
"The Wizard of Oz".
There were elements of it
that-that might have been
a little cursed,
but the-the blessing
that that film
was to the cast,
and to the American cinema,
I just don't think you could
call "The Wizard of Oz"
entirely cursed.
It's that's certain.
- I think if people think
it's a sad film,
it might be
because of what happened
to Judy Garland.
Her experience at MGM
led in some sense, at least,
to a life that it ended
in her mid-forties.
And the success I think
of "Over the Rainbow"
even now is because it
has an emotional jolt
that ties it to Judy Garland,
looking up at the sky
and wishing
that she were over the rainbow.
What have you heard
about the legends
surrounding the making
of "The Wizard of Oz"?
- Um
- I mean, there's just
so many rumors in general
about "The Wizard of Oz".
- Oh, we could talk
about that all day.
I mean, I've researched
this stuff
since the time I was
a little kid,
- I'll get you, my pretty.
- Definitely heard about the
burning of Margaret Hamilton.
- Yeah. Oof.
- You know, she caught fire
once unintentionally.
- I definitely know
of the makeup situation
that happened with the Tin Man.
- Heard about the Munchkin
hanging.
- I've heard that a small
person hung themselves on set.
- The list goes on and on
and on and on and on.
I think it's a part
of the legacy
I think that when
some people look at films
that are super beloved
and they hear stories
about the difficulties
or the tragedies
that happen on set,
they then go on to ascribe
that production as "cursed",
because it's hard to hear
these stories of tragedy.
And you want to believe
that at least someone
or something is in charge
because the reality is
no one's in charge
and the universe doesn't
care about you,
but that is too crushing
to encompass with our minds.
So, we come up with ideas like
that production is cursed,
'cause it makes us feel
a little bit better
about the terrible things that
might have happened on the set.
When I was five,
I sat down and watched
"Wizard of Oz".
Everybody had a great night,
but I had the life changing
experience.
The characters and the fantasy
and the songs,
but I just kind of bought into
all of it.
You don't choose these things,
they choose you.
And that's a statement that
I think anybody watching this
who has any kind of passion
for anything can
can comprehend.
What "The Wizard of Oz" is about
is not a question I have
actually considered.
And that's amazing to me.
- There are lots of theories.
People thought that
the Yellow Brick Road
was something to do
with the gold standard.
Society had been through some
really difficult times
with the depression
and then the war.
People were forced to move
all over the place.
And then we still had lots
of first-generation immigrants
who'd come in
in the 1910s and 20s.
They had to leave their homes
and knew they would never
be able to go back.
Here was Judy.
She was disrupted.
She was off in a whole 'nother
world,
just like the population
of the country.
And the whole tension
was "she couldn't go home".
- Close your eyes
and tap your heels together,
three times.
- But suddenly through magic,
she is able to go home
and she is sort of
like a surrogate
for the American population.
- There's no place like home.
They went out of the movie
with some sense of redemption.
At least Judy got home.
I think it's about the way
in which human beings
trust each other
to lead each other
through the world.
Yeah.
'Cause the Wizard's
not inherently a bad guy,
but he has a lot of power.
And power corrupts.
That's absolutely true.
It was made in 1938
and it opened in August 17th,
1939,
and America was at the cusp
of a World War.
- Go, fly! Fly!
- Fly! Fly! Fly!
And that dark energy,
it was part of the air they
were breathing at that time.
That beat of war was going on
in the background.
I mean, and they
so much made it real
with the Winkies marching
like Nazis.
"The Wizard of Oz"
was a hopeful outcome
of that dark energy
because the witch is dead.
Dorothy gets back to Kansas.
The objects themselves
associated with the production
still have that power
over people
and an object like
the Ruby slippers
is a perfect example of that.
I've seen people just break
down in tears,
coming into this room
and seeing the ruby slippers
in real life.
You know, Dorothy Gale
is a stand-in for anybody
who's ever thought about
wanting more out of their life
or being unhappy
with their circumstances,
seeking something
over the rainbow.
Having an object in front of you
that represents that,
it's actually very powerful.
"Wizard of Oz"
was a very difficult shoot.
There were conflicts
and re-castings
and accidents
and script problems.
- They wanted to make
a realistic film
that was a fantasy.
All of the characters suffered
through the costumes.
Dad had to eat every meal
through a straw.
The lighting was so intense.
They were dying under
those costumes.
There was a fire marshal
on the set at all times
with a light meter
going around to make sure
the set wasn't going
to catch on fire
from the heat of the lights.
There were 14 writers
and five directors
and three choreographers
and a potentially
fatal accident,
a potentially fatal reaction
to makeup.
I would imagine
you'd have to ask
any number of the cast members
who worked on "The Wizard of Oz"
if "The Wizard of Oz"
was cursed or not.
And if you asked Buddy Ebsen,
he might tell you, yes.
His participation was cursed.
Originally Buddy Ebsen
was cast to play the Tin Man.
And he was a very popular
film actor of the time
known as the song and dance man.
And he would've been a perfect
fit for the film.
The makeup was pretty basic.
They used clown white
and then they dusted it
with ground up aluminum.
He found that he was starting
to have cramps
in his fingers, or in his feet.
And then one night
it spread to his arms
and his legs
and he could not breathe.
- They were putting silver
paint on him
and they didn't realize it,
you know,
he was being poisoned.
He had been inhaling
the aluminum particles,
you know, that floated around.
They had coated his lungs.
- He went home one night.
Couldn't breathe.
Ended up in the hospital
with pneumonia
in an oxygen tent.
Unfortunately, his
participation in the film
was cut short.
And it ended up being a film
that kind of scarred him
in a way too.
Um, literally scarred his lungs
uh, because he had a tendency
toward bronchitis
for the rest of his life.
- In the early 2000's
I had a show called
"MythBusters"
and we were doing a story we
called "The Goldfinger Myth".
And it's about the actress,
Shirley Eaton,
who got painted gold
in the James Bond film,
supposedly got suffocated
by the paint.
Which she didn't.
But as part of the research
for that myth,
we came across the famous story
from "The Wizard of Oz"
that Buddy Ebsen was originally
slated to play the Tin Man.
And couldn't because
he was poisoned
by the silver paint
that they put on him
to play the Tin Man.
When we first started
to look at doing a story
about "The Wizard of Oz",
there are a few avenues
to that negative affect
and one is poison.
So, if Buddy Ebsen was poisoned
by lead in the paint,
we-we can't test that
on ourselves.
But the other main reason given
for the difficulty
with the paint
was that it cut off the oxygen
that you breathe
through your skin.
And if you paint your whole body
um, you will somehow suffocate.
That is testable by us.
The suffocation is something
that we can creep up on.
We have an EMT on set.
We can make sure our pulse
oxygen levels are up to snuff.
And that is the aspect
of the story that we tested.
- This is the exact stuff that
they were using on the Tin Man.
Which was just pure
aluminum powder.
Now, why are you guys
feeding her oxygen?
- Her heart rate's gone up.
When most humans think
about being Buddy Ebsen
in that moment, oh, you get
to play a Tin Man.
So, they're gonna build this
elaborate costume around you.
And then they're gonna
paint you silver.
These are all the activities
of like,
the best day ever
for a 10-year-old.
And I think every one of us
intersects with that of like,
that sounds incredible.
And when you add on to that,
the idea of being poisoned
by effectively the highest
level of play, um,
that's exactly the kind of
juxtaposition
where people wanna
keep telling that story.
I think it is
certainly plausible
that Buddy Ebsen could
have had lifelong effects
from the makeup on
"Wizard of Oz".
On every single story
we did on "MythBusters",
we were working with chemicals
that could affect us
in a negative way
and we had to be able to talk
to the insurance company
about how we were going
to do it safely.
That's definitely not something
that I think was
going on in the 30s.
The snow in
the poppy field sequence
was made of some derivation
of asbestos.
Nobody thought that
this was damaging.
They were doing things
the best way they knew how,
80 years ago.
And they were doing them
as safely
as they thought they could.
A lot of the special
effects that were used
in "The Wizard of Oz"
were experimental.
They were put into
"The Wizard of Oz"
for the first time on film.
- Buddy Ebsen was a guinea pig
for a new kind of makeup
and it cost him the film.
There was another rumor
that the Munchkins
were all drunkards.
During the filming
of "The Wizard of Oz"
most of the Munchkins stayed
together at this hotel.
The rumor is that while
they were here,
they carried on in a
less-than-civilized fashion.
This hotel will always be known
for the residence of most
of the little people
when they made the movie
uh, in 1938.
It's strange,
but I can almost hear
the Munchkin sounds
because more than a hundred
of them stayed right here
in this hotel.
I'm sure there were
a few parties.
There have been
stories for years
that there were wild sex orgies,
that the Munchkins went crazy.
I used to hear this as a kid.
- Come on here, Larry,
let me tell you.
- You can tell me.
There were roughly
124 little people
playing the Munchkins
and the stories
about the orgies,
the drunken parties,
the misbehavior,
tend to be painted in the
broadest strokes possible
and incriminate 124 people.
There were maybe a half a dozen
or 10 who were rowdy.
And there were things
that did happen.
- One of the Munchkins
brought a gun to the set.
A sort of a notorious little guy
by the name of Charlie Kelly.
He was jealous over his ex-wife
and she was dating another
little person.
He didn't get fired though.
They just made sure
he didn't return with uh,
another pistol.
I have to ask you about
- Of course.
- all the rumors that
have come out
and the rumors are that
all the little people
got drunk every night.
- Nah, that's so
- No.
- That's stupid, really.
They didn't.
- Where do you think these
rumors came from, then?
- The great Judy Garland.
On a TV special in 1967,
Judy Garland said the Munchkins
on "The Wizard of Oz" set
were-were drunks.
There was nothing like
the drunken stories
that Judy Garland sort
of pinned on them
in one of her inebriated moments
on the "Jack Parr Show".
- They were drunks.
- They were little drunks?
- And they put them all
in one hotel room.
Not one room,
one hotel in Culver City.
- Yeah.
- And they got smashed
every night.
And they'd pick 'em up
in butterfly nets.
Because it came
from Judy Garland,
I think people may have thought,
well, she was there.
She would know.
As much as they loved
Judy Garland,
and they really did,
the Munchkin actors had
to suffer with that story
over the years.
Um, and they-they
weren't happy about that.
- As much as I love Judy,
when she made that statement
on "Jack Parr Show",
Judy had a couple of bells
in her,
and she was trying to be funny.
And when you're trying
to be funny,
and you don't know what to say,
you're gonna pick on
the little people.
- Now I've heard stories
- Don't you believe it.
- Really?
- That's what they all hate,
them, them stupid stories.
- That was not true.
- You mind if I say somethin'?
If I were 6-foot-tall,
I'd-I'd go to every one
of those guys
that wrote those stupid things,
you know, it was awful,
I'da grabbed up against
the wall and said,
"You know what you did?"
Bam!
- The Munchkins got really
irritated
by questions like that.
Rumors of sex orgies.
- Oh, that's a load of BS.
- While there probably
were parties,
it was nothing like
what was portrayed in the movie,
"Under the Rainbow".
"Under the Rainbow" is
a great, great, great movie
and very misunderstood.
But true movie buffs know
the truth about it.
- Hey guys, this is
Gregg Turkington
with the Victorville
Film Archive.
- And I have five copies
of that, but I brought one.
This is "Under the Rainbow".
This is sort of
the definitive making
of "The Wizard of Oz" movie.
If you like Chevy Chase,
this is one of his best movies.
And of course, Carrie Fisher,
we all love her as Princess
Leia,
but she shone bright,
not only in "Star Wars" movies,
but also here,
in "Under the Rainbow".
The true story of the Munchkins.
I'm Steve Rash.
I'm director of a film called
"Under the Rainbow".
The film turned out
to be about um
the Munchkins tearing
up the Culver Hotel
during the filming
of "The Wizard of Oz"
with a story overlaid
about a secret service agent,
a paranoid duke and duchess,
an assassin,
a Japanese spy,
a German little person spy.
- I, I didn't think people
would believe
that the Munchkins would be
swinging from the chandeliers,
and would tie up
the hotel manager,
and run amok.
They probably thought
that it wouldn't perpetuate
it that much,
but it did.
I had not seen
"Under the Rainbow"
in at least 20 years.
This last 12 or 14 hours
since seeing it again
after 20 years
has kind of shaken me.
I thought we were more advanced
in 1980 than this.
I was quite disappointed
at how racist,
how sexist,
how elitist
it conceptually was.
Probably some other "-ists"
as well.
Did that bother me
the day that I shot it?
I don't think so.
It bothers me like Hell today.
The only fabulous thing
about the whole experience
was meeting and working with
over a hundred little people.
In retrospect,
looking at the way
we were portraying them,
um, they should have revolted.
This film seems to believe
that anything a small person
does is funny,
and of course, that's not true.
- You know, I agree with you.
And one of the things
that bother me
about the use of the little
people in this movie
is that at no point
were any of them,
except for Billy Barty,
as the spy,
dignified by being made
into characters
who had personalities.
It felt a little bit
like a train wreck,
but I was the conductor.
This is probably rationalization
because so many little people
had a wonderful experience
and made a lot of money.
I hope that makes up
for the fact
that we really didn't deal
with them
in a truthful way.
We tried to do it in a fun way
and you know,
some people think
it's hilarious.
Um, I don't anymore.
Are you a "Wizard of Oz" fan?
- Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
Some of the people who made it
in retrospect
may have felt bad about it.
Everything that can happen
on a film
happened to that film.
The joy you see on the screen
in "The Wizard of Oz",
that was an illusion created by
an awful lot of people
working awfully hard.
The studio really was a factory.
There were 500 carpenters,
15 plumbers,
two dozen blacksmiths,
one barber,
one shoe-shine boy,
and one man in charge
of the lions.
The actors and actresses
were workers in that factory.
Mom was born
in Cleveland, Ohio, 1902.
She taught in the Boston
public schools
while she pounded the pavements
in New York.
"The Wizard of Oz" was casting.
They had thought of looking
for a beautiful witch.
She said, well,
that does it for me,
but subsequently they
changed their mind
and they wanted a quote,
"Ugly witch".
And mother said,
"Well, of course
they would've thought of me."
And she got the part.
And the-the rest was history.
People are shocked to realize
that Mom was on the screen
in "The Wizard of Oz"
only 12 minutes.
Of course, her presence
dominated the whole film.
- I remember being
incredibly scared
of the witch.
They knew what they were doing
when they cast
Margaret Hamilton.
Maybe they didn't realize
just the impact that
she would have though.
A big concern of hers
was that the kids would
believe it.
- How nice to see you,
Mr. Rogers.
- I'm so glad to see you.
I'd like you to know
my television friend,
Miss Margaret Hamilton.
- How do you do?
And so, she spent a lot of time
trying to convince kids
that she was a kind old lady
and that was a witch
on the screen.
And that was make believe.
And they shouldn't be afraid,
- Would you try on a dress
like the one you had on?
- Yes, I'd-I'd love to.
- To show us?
- I think that would be fun.
But she tried to stress,
especially on "Mr. Rogers",
that it was just an act.
- There's your old friend,
the Wicked Witch of the West.
- How did s how did she talk?
- Well, she talked like this.
It's very nice to see you.
In the 30s and the 40s,
safety conditions
were not so great.
And uh,
Mom was badly burned
in the picture.
It's a scene where she
has arrived
in the Munchkin Village.
- When you see her entrance
into Munchkinland
in the smoke,
it's not Margaret Hamilton.
It was her double, Betty Danko.
But they wanted Margaret
to do the disappearance.
They wanted to get it
in one shot.
They wanted to make it
look real.
So, they weren't using
her double for that.
And it was a complicated shot.
Margaret Hamilton was talking
to the Good Witch and Dorothy,
and she had to deliver her line,
"I'll get you and your little
dog, too."
- I'll get you, my pretty,
and your little dog, too!
And whirl around
and get to that
elevator platform.
The elevator was very small.
So, she had to hit
her mark, exactly,
pull the broom straight up,
pull her elbows in
so that she could drop cleanly
through the floor.
Say the line, back up
just the right amount,
get on the platform,
pull everything in.
The smoke came up
and she dropped down,
huge burst of real flame,
But they let the fire
effect go too quickly.
And the broom caught on fire
as did the hat.
She was severely burned.
She was immediately
smothered with blankets
to put out the fire.
What she ultimately
ended up having
was third-degree burns
on her hand
and second-degree burns
on her face.
Now compounding that,
her green makeup
was copper based,
and heated copper
could begin to eat
into her skin.
They had to take her off
to the side of the set
and clean her face,
her pores completely,
of that green makeup.
And they used rubbing alcohol
and they had to press down
on these fresh burns.
Uh, Margaret Hamilton said
she could never,
ever forget that pain.
And the doctor salved her up,
wrapped her up like a mummy,
and they sent her home.
She was very concerned
what my reaction
was going to be.
I was three years old
at that time.
She called ahead to my nanny
and said,
"Look, I'm coming home.
Tell him that I have
a new costume.
I'm gonna look
just like a mummy.
And I'm really excited
to show him this costume.
And as soon as we get home
and I get in bed,
you have to bring him in
so he can see this."
And I still remember being
brought into her room.
And here was Mom
bandaged everywhere,
particularly all over her face
with this couple of slits
for her eyes.
And she said, "How do you like
my new costume?"
And I said, "Gee,
that was kind of neat."
And she handled
that whole situation
so that it was never
any trauma for me.
When she did go back
six weeks later,
the first thing they
wanted her to do
was a flying scene on the broom
with the smoke
coming out behind.
They said, "Maggie,
we just have this broom
with a little gasoline engine
on the back."
She was filming
a sky riding scene
and they positioned a
a pipe that would blast fire,
right beside uh
where she sat on the broom.
- The wardrobe man brought up
a costume to her
and said, "This is your
fireproof costume."
- She went, "Whoa."
- She just refused.
She says,
"I'm not gonna do it."
- So, Margaret Hamilton's
stunt double,
Betty Danko,
agreed to do the scene.
Betty Danko got in
the costume, the makeup,
put her on the broom,
started the wind machines.
Told her "All right, action,
push the button, Miss Danko."
And she pushed the button
and the smoke mechanism
at the back of the broom
exploded.
- That thing blew up.
- She went one direction
The broom went the other
direction.
There were flying metal pieces
that embedded in her leg.
And she was in the hospital
for a while.
Any kind of legend, good or bad,
is going to travel.
The important thing though
is to separate the legend
and the myth from the truth.
The only way in which
the film is cursed now
is the way all of that
has been expanded upon,
and enlarged, and lied about.
And this has been
going on for decades.
I think it's yellow journalism
to the max.
If I were just somebody
who sat at home
and watched "The Wizard of Oz"
for my own pleasure
and heard the legends,
I would say,
"Well, gee,
maybe those are true.
Gosh, did that really happen?
Fuck!"
The most famous of all
"The Oz" legends
is one of the earliest ones
that there is a Munchkin
who hung himself on the set,
and you can see him
in the background
hanging and swinging.
I've got some curses
for you if you
if you wanna know.
Someone showed me a um,
a couple of feet of film
that was allegedly once
part of the cut
of "The Wizard of Oz"
that had been removed
when they learned
that that dark spot
up in the upper
right-hand corner,
is a Munchkin who hanged
himself from the lighting grid.
Um, I saw the black blob
that was supposedly
the dead Munchkin.
When was this?
- During the filming
of "Under the Rainbow."
I wasn't interested enough
to get out a magnifier
and-and check the validity.
I bought it.
Good story.
- It went from being a
stagehand caught on camera,
to a stagehand
who was depressed,
and hung himself on camera,
to an MGM executive
who was so despairing
of how much
"The Wizard of Oz" was costing
that he hung himself on camera,
to an actress who hung herself
because she didn't
get the part of Dorothy,
to a Munchkin who hung himself
because Judy Garland
wouldn't date him.
I get this from grade school
kids
and I don't mind it from
grade school kids,
but it's when adults
who come up to me
to say, "You know, there's
a man hanging."
And it's like
Basically, one of
the Munchkins hung himself
on the set of
"The Wizard of Oz".
Fortunately, it was very far
in the distance
and it wasn't even noticed
at the time of the release.
It wasn't until some real
true blue film buffs
who watched the movie
enough times
happened to notice it one day.
- There's a conspiracy within
"The Wizard of Oz"
that a Munchkin, um,
hung himself in the background
during one of the scenes.
You see it right there
on film, on certain copies.
- Like what the fuck's
goin' on over there?
It's not on every copy.
You have to have the
collector's editions.
This is the one you wanna own,
because this is the only place
to actually see
the original hanging
Munchkin footage.
And of course, uh,
it's priceless,
so, I was very,
very glad to acquire it
uh, from this uh, dealer.
- Oh no, he didn't
know what he had!
If he knew what he had, he
wouldn't have sold it to me.
That, that, that we know
to be the truth.
Now, this is an edition
that collectors love, also.
It's the 50th anniversary
edition.
Unfortunately, with this,
they did find the alternate
footage with the,
the bird from the LA Zoo
and they replaced uh,
the-the hanging Munchkin
footage with that footage.
- We tried to get uh,
like, the original copy.
It's the oldest copy we found.
It's literally VHS.
And like I said, this is
the re-mastered version,
that now, they say it's a bird.
And in the original version,
it straight up looks like
a Munchkin.
Like a Munchkin.
- Munchkin.
- Munchkin.
I'm gonna show you both versions
of "The Wizard of Oz",
of the, of the hanging
Munchkin scene,
which is one of the most
iconic in
"The Wizard of Oz" history,
if not motion, picture history.
Okay, here go, we're off
to see the Wizard now.
You see that?
That's a, that's the bird.
Let me freeze this.
You see what is obviously
an exotic bird, like an emu.
They found a big, exotic bird.
I don't know what the breed was,
but it was a similar size
to the Munchkin.
They put that bird in the same
corner of the room.
This was, is sound stage
number two.
And they shot the same scene,
but with a bird flapping around
and replaced it in most prints,
except for the print
that leaked out.
And this is the one
collectors wanna see.
This is the suicide
of the anonymous Munchkin.
Never been identified.
Never will be. Um.
- There!
Pfft! Dead.
His neck, neck is snapped
instantly in a hanging, so.
Look at that, swinging back
and forth. Dead.
People have shared
the footage on YouTube,
and some of these sorts
of bootleg sites.
Because of the times
in which we are our living,
there is a very "worthy" soul
who has doctored the footage
and posts it on YouTube,
as if to say,
there, you can see
it is a hanging Munchkin
and this is what it
used to look like.
And when the rumors
started to go around,
MGM took this out
and dropped in a-a bird.
Now it really is a bird.
- That's the bird they
photoshopped in, man.
I have no problem debunking
a conspiracy theory.
Like, the whole Keanu Reeves
being a reptilian.
You know, I've pretty much
debunked that one.
But this one,
I'm telling you guys, man,
it's-it's for real.
- If you watch the original,
it's for real.
- The bird is not in the
original copy.
The bird is in the remade copy,
and they put the bird there
to make people say, you know,
oh, it's a bird.
It's hangin' right there.
Now, that is not a bird.
There's no wings,
and it's rockin' back and forth.
I mean, it's there.
I think there is a great danger,
not only because it's
inaccurate or disproportionate,
but because it is omnipresent
in today's world
of looking for dreck and dark.
There is just an essential
purity
about the "Oz" story
and the "Oz" film.
It was at a time when
Judy was so excited
about making that picture
and so delighted to be
making that picture.
She was thrilled.
It was well known on the set
that if Judy cracked up
at something,
you had to take five minutes
to let her laugh it
out of her system.
And when it came time
to do her first scenes
with Burt Lahr in the movie,
these were the scenes where
they meet the Cowardly Lion
in the forest and he goes
after Toto.
- I'll get you, anyway, Peewee.
And Judy rescues,
Toto - picks up Toto
and slaps the Lion,
- Wah!
- And Burt Lahr starts to cry.
- What'd you do that for?
- Well, they could not
get this take.
They did it two or three times.
And every time Burt Lahr
started to cry
with the waterspouts
built into his wig,
and the water pouring down
and him doing his whole
cowardly lion bit.
She would crack up.
- She would break up every time.
It is in the film.
She picks up Toto,
and she's starts to laugh,
and she pulls the dog over
in front of her face.
It is heaven,
and it's in the film.
- She couldn't stop laughing,
take, after take, after take.
- It was an expensive picture.
You know, they were running,
they had to get the scene done.
And finally, after three
or four takes of this,
Victor Fleming took her
behind the set
behind one of the trees
and he gave her a smart,
little smack across the face.
If that's how he handled things,
well, it's too bad
he had to slap her.
He didn't punch her.
He didn't beat her.
It was just a sharp,
little, you know, "Come on.
Come to.
Get with it here".
- Well
if-if that's what happened,
that's what happened.
Um, you know, um
I don't know what else
to say about that.
Was it the right thing to do?
Well, no,
probably not,
but what are you gonna do?
You've gotta get
the picture made.
It was coded into her
to want to please,
to try to give out all
the love she had inside her
in hopes that it would
come back to her.
She said,
I always felt unwanted.
And she wasn't being overly
dramatic when she said it.
She found out that her mother
had tried to have her aborted
and a doctor friend of theirs
warn them against it.
So, the mother tried
everything she could
to induce a miscarriage.
This is somebody who
didn't have the protection
within herself or in the people
who were supposed to be
taking care of her
to withstand the concrete mixer
that Hollywood could be.
When my mother started
"The Wizard of Oz",
she was 15, when she started it
and she finished it
when she was 16.
Your body starts to change.
The character of Dorothy
of course,
was even younger in the book.
And they wanted my mom
to look like a child.
They said, "You can't gain
any weight".
She had no idea that the studio
had asked some of the doctors
who worked at the studio,
to give her what they called
energy pills and or pep pills,
so that she would keep
that childlike figure.
Pep pills are names
for a gradity of barbiturates
and prescription drugs.
The young pill addict can move
from sedatives like Doriden,
"red devils"
to amphetamines.
- That would cut her appetite
and that would give her
a little bit of energy.
And then when my grandmother
said she can't sleep at night,
then they gave her
a sleeping pill.
And they didn't go out
to harm her.
They didn't what
they were doing.
They had no idea
about addiction.
They had no idea about how
this would harm people.
She developed
a dependency on them
that nobody knew a dependency
was probable.
I've never blamed the studio
for what happened to my mom
as far as the addiction
that encompassed her adult life
because the-the studio
would never go out to harm
its biggest money maker.
You were a product.
The actors were never really,
truly thought about as people.
They were part of the factory.
We know that the studio
did harm.
We know that now.
We know that amphetamines
and we know that sleeping pills,
you don't give that to kids.
We know that.
They didn't know that then.
And even if they did,
would they have cared?
I don't know.
I don't know.
They got around the child
labor laws.
They, they did harmful things.
My mother had breakdowns at MGM
because she went from movie
to movie, to movie,
to movie, to movie.
She never had a vacation.
But again,
I don't think you can blame
people for ignorance.
We all now know about the world
of addiction.
They didn't.
When I started to
dabble in the world of cocaine
and alcohol,
I realized that once I found out
about my family history
that I fit right in.
And now that I've been
sober 34 years,
I think to myself,
that's why this happened.
It happened to her.
It happened to me.
And it was incredibly fulfilling
to find out that I didn't
have to blame myself.
And I didn't have to blame her.
And that I learned to forgive.
But you don't have
to learn to forget.
You hear all these
stories in Hollywood
and no matter how
you phrase it, you know,
it is something
that is kind of sad.
But part of what I love
about Judy is that she,
throughout her life,
references this time
as being the happiest
that she ever was
and how she constantly
was always trying to search
for that kind of rainbow again.
As far as Judy goes,
I-I know that this was
one of her,
you know, her best memories.
But I feel like
her experience was
much like Hollywood
has always been.
"The Wizard of Oz"
the reason I love it so much,
I have to say that that is
because of her performance.
Who she is in that movie
draws you in as a child,
and she got me hooked.
So, because of her,
I became obsessed
with this movie
and seeing her other films,
I just fell in love
with her more and more.
Do we remove some
magic from a narrative
by busting a myth
about that narrative?
I submit, no.
I submit that no one ever minds
knowing more about a subject.
You can certainly
demystify things
and still celebrate them
at the same time.
I take it as axiomatic
that humans, as explorers,
are evolutionarily driven
to find the truth of things.
We have always sent
our best and brightest
to the edge of the known
to report back what they find.
While some people may complain
that in telling the true
stories about some narrative
we're somehow reducing
some of its magic.
I don't think that's true
for most people.
I wouldn't necessarily attach
the term "cursed" to
"The Wizard of Oz".
There were elements of it
that-that might have been
a little cursed,
but the-the blessing
that that film
was to the cast,
and to the American cinema,
I just don't think you could
call "The Wizard of Oz"
entirely cursed.
It's that's certain.
- I think if people think
it's a sad film,
it might be
because of what happened
to Judy Garland.
Her experience at MGM
led in some sense, at least,
to a life that it ended
in her mid-forties.
And the success I think
of "Over the Rainbow"
even now is because it
has an emotional jolt
that ties it to Judy Garland,
looking up at the sky
and wishing
that she were over the rainbow.