Where to watch The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Trivia & production notes

• MGM acquired the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs demonstrated that fantasy adaptations of children's stories could succeed commercially.
• The script went through at least ten screenwriters, with only three—Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf—receiving screen credit.
• One early script treatment reimagined the Tin Woodman as a criminal sentenced to an eternal tin suit as punishment, designed to soften his hardened heart.
• The entire story was reconceived as Dorothy's dream sequence because screenwriter Noel Langley believed a 1939 audience was too sophisticated to accept Oz as straightforward fantasy.
• Ray Bolger convinced producer Mervyn LeRoy to swap him with Buddy Ebsen so he could play the Scarecrow, the role that inspired him to become a vaudevillian after watching Fred Stone perform it on stage in 1902.
• W.C. Fields was initially cast as the Wizard but Ed Wynn rejected the role for being too small, leaving Fields unavailable when the studio couldn't meet his fee.
• Gale Sondergaard withdrew from playing the Wicked Witch of the West just two days before filming began because the character was changed from a glamorous villain to an ugly hag.
• Margaret Hamilton, who replaced Sondergaard as the Wicked Witch, had recently played a similarly villainous role in the Judy Garland film Babes in Arms.
• The MGM costume department designed over 100 costumes for the Munchkin sequences and photographed each performer in their outfit to ensure consistent makeup and wardrobe across multiple filming days.
• The production's art department spent nearly a week determining the precise shade of yellow for the yellow brick road.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Wizard of Oz, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.