#mgm movie

[mask131]

So... Wicked is coming back in style. And as such I need to make a little informative post.

Because since as early as my arrival onto the Internet, in the distant years of the late 2000s, a lot of people have been treating Wicked as some sort of "official" part of the Oz series. As part of the Oz canon or as THE "original" work everything else derives from (literaly, some people, probably kids, but did believe the MGM movie was made BASED on Wicked...) And as an Oz fan, that bothers me.

[Damn, ever since I watched Coco Peru's videos her voice echoes in my brain each time I say this line.]

So here's a few FACTS for you facts lovers.

The Wicked movie that is coming out right now (I was sold this as a series, turns out it is a movie duology?) is a cinematic adaptation of the stage musical Wicked created by Schwartz and Holzman, the Broadway classic and success of the 2000s (it was created in 2003).

Now, the Wicked musical everybody knows is itself an adaptation - and this fact is not as notorios, somehow? The Wicked musical is the adaptation of a novel released in 1995 by Gregory Maguire, called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. A very loose and condensed adaptation to say the least - as the Wicked musical is basically a lighter and simplified take on a much darker, brooding and mature tale. Basically fans of the novel have accused the musical of being some sort of honeyed, sugary-sweet, highschool-romance-fanfic-AU, while those who enjoyed the musical and went to see the novel are often shocked at discovering their favorite musical is based on what is basically a "dark and edgy - let's shock them all" take on the Oz lore. (Some do like both however, apparently? But I rarely met them.)

A side-fact which will be relevant later, is that this novel was but the first of a full series of novel Oz wrote about a dark-and-adult fantasy reimagining of the land of Oz - there's Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, Out of Oz, and more.

However the real fact I want to point out is that Maguire's novel, from which the musical itself derives, is a "grimmification" (to take back TV Tropes terminology) of the 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz. The movie everybody knows when it comes to Oz, but that everybody forgets is itself the adaptation of a book - the same way people forget the Wicked musical is adapted from a novel. The MGM movie is adapted from L. Frank Baum's famous 1900 classic for children The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - and a quite loose adaptation that reimagines a lot of elements and details.

Now, a lot of people present Maguire's novel as being based/inspired/a revisionist take on Baum's novel... And that's false. Maguire's Wicked novel is clearly dominated by and mainly influenced by the MGM movie, with only a few book elements and details sprinkled on top. Mind you, the sequels Maguire wrote do take more elements, characters and plot points from the various Oz books of Baum... But they stay mostly Maguire's personal fantasy world. Yes, Oz "books" in plural - because that's a fact people tend to not know either... L. Frank Baum didn't just write one book about the Land of Oz. He wrote FOURTEEN of them, an entire series, because it was his most popular sales, and his audience like his editor pressured him to produce more (in fact he got sick of Oz and tried to write other books, but since they failed he was forced to continue Oz novels to survive). Everybody forgot about the Oz series due to the massive success of the starter novel - but it has a lot of very famous sequels, such as The Marvelous Land of Oz or Ozma of Oz (the later was loosely adapted by Disney as the famous 80s nostalgic-cursed movie Return to Oz).

So... To return to my original point. The current Wicked movies are not directly linked in any way to Baum's novel. The Wicked musical was already as "canon" and as "linked" to the MGM movie as 2013's Oz The Great and Powerful by Disney was. As for Maguire's novel, due to its dark, mature, brooding and more complex worldbuilding nature, I can only compare it to the recent attempt at making a "Game of Thrones Oz" through the television series Emerald City.

The Wicked movies coming out are separated from Baum's novel at the fourth degree. Because they are the movie adaptation of a musical adaptation of a novel reinventing a movie adaptation of the original children book.

And I could go even FURTHER if you dare me to and claim the Wicked movies are at the 5TH DEGREE! Because a little-known-fact is that the MGM movie was not a direct adaptation of Baum's novel... But rather took a lot of cues and influence from the massively famous stage-extravaganza of 1902 The Wizard of Oz... A musical adaptation of Baum's novel, created and written by Baum himself, and that was actually more popular than the novel in the pre-World War II America. It was from this enormous Broadway success (my my, how the snake bites its tail - the 1902 Wizard of Oz was the musical Wicked of its time) that, for example, the movie took the idea of the Good Witch of the North killing the sleeping-poppies with snow.

[witchesoz]

Fashion in Oz: the Good Witches (2)

Given I couldn't find any pictures of the Good Witches in the 1902 extravaganza, I'll immediately jump to the MGM movie and its Good Witch, Glinda. Which is a fascinating case - because this character is the literal fusion of the original two Good Witches, bearing the name of the Good Witch of the South (Glinda) and yet holding the title of Good Witch of the North, and fulfilling the role of the two witches successively. And it is interesting to see that, in Glinda's costume right here, we have a fusion of visual elements taken from both of the literary characters. Indeed, the Good Witch holding a magic wand as tall as her (so a sort of magic staff) and having her dress covered in sparkling stars does come entirely from the Good Witch of the North - with the change of the stylized "N" at the top of the staff being changed here for a silvery star. Meanwhile, the fact that Glinda wears a sort of tall crown is taken from Glinda's depictions, as we saw earlier - though here Glinda's crown is larger, silvery and with stars at the top (to keep the whole "star" aesthetic). Of course, no need to point out that Glinda's headwear is also here to mimick and oppose the Wicked Witch's own hat. Interestingly, we find back here the curly red hair of Glinda in Baum's original description of the Good Witch of the South, even though here Billie Burke, while beautiful, plays a more mature Glinda than the original "young sorceress" Baum depicted her as. And... well I said red hair, but to be fair it is actually more of a venitian blond/strawberry blond kind of color, given how Burke's hair can look a deep blond depending on the lighting. We could almost say that the fact Glinda's dress is pink was maybe also lifted from the book illustrations of Glinda - as we saw before, John R. Neill added reds to the white of Glinda's outfits (or at least the red was added in the colorization of her dresses), and often it resulted in pink outfits. After all, pink is a "soft and feminine" color, isn't it? It might be a nod to these illustrations... or it might simply be the movie crew's very own invention. After all, they wanted to depict a "good witch", they wanted to depict a feminine character that was kind and gentle - and pink would certainly be the color to go. Overall, what the MGM movie did was also insist on a true... "fairy" aesthetic, or "fairy tale" vibe for the Glinda costume. The fact her magic staff has a star on top is made to make it seems more like a fairy magic wand (which is usually depicted with a star at the end) ; having her be in a pink costume with a heavy star motif also works in this "fairy" concept ; while her puffy dress is very... princess-like, a feeling that is reinforced by the "crown" she wears. All in all, without a doubt, we can say that this costume is one of a "fairy-princess". In fact, look carefully at the puffy, translucid sleeves. The way they are placed is no mere coincidence - they are not here to cover the arms, they are here to ornate the shoulders. And the way these "transluscent puffs" were shaped is clearly meant to evoke insect wings - or to be more precise, fairy wings. In fact there is a true irony when we look at the color palette. In the MGM movie Glinda gets all the silver (it is her main color patterns, silver and pink) - while in the original book it was the Wicked Witches who were associated with silver (silver shoes, silver whistle). And in reverse, in the MGM movie the Witches got a strong red pattern (red shoes, red smoke, red hourglass), while in the books red was the color of Glinda's lands and people. EDIT: Re-watching Glinda's scenes, I actually missed a detail in her outfit... She doesn't just have a star pattern on her dress, she also has a butterfly one! If you look carefully, she wears on her clothes small, silvery, shining butterflies. There is one around her neck, another by her left shoulder, and a third on her belt. It clearly reinforces the "fairy vibe" they were going with for this character

Given I have started looking into MGM's Glinda (or North-Glinda), who is a very unique character breaking the usual Good Witches pattern, I'll take a look at other incarnations of her before moving on to other adaptations of the original Good Witches (Locasta and South-Glinda). The most recent would be this incarnation, from "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return". We keep here a heavy MGM influence - the curly venitian blond hair (though it is a darker/browner shade of strawberry blond than the original MGM movie), a large, puffy, princess-like dress entirely pink, puffy shoulder pieces and a high crown... However this design changed significantly several details. Such as the skirt - quite "simple" in the MGM movie, here we have several levels piled on and wrapped up around each other, for a more complex and... "regal" I guess effect. The addition of numerous pearls on the lower part of the skirt notably enhance the feeling of "royalty" or at least "wealth" this Glinda produces - I wonder if the pearls on her dress are meant to evoke the "pearl of truth" Glinda is said to wield in "The Marvelous Land of Oz"... Other details include the puffy shoulder pieces losing the "translucid fairy wings" effect to become more traditional puffy, elbow-long sleeves, typical of "old-fashioned" dresses  ; the crown, which is here actually a high diadem/tiara instead of a full circling crown, or even how the silver-and-pink palette becomes here white-and-pink. But the most significant change would probably be the change of Glinda's pattern. Here, no more stars. On her dress and in her tiara, what you see is flowers - and even her sleeves and collar are shaped like petals. Oh, and of course the size of her star-topped staff got massively reduced, now becoming just a simple "magic wand".

Another North-Glinda incarnation comes from the cartoon series "The Wizard of Oz". No, not the recent thing for little kiddies that is posted everywhere on Youtube nowadays - I am speaking of the unfinished 1990 cartoon, supposed to be a sequel to the MGM movie. Their version of Glinda was based on the MGM character, but they added numerous design changes. Most notorious being that Glinda suddenly turns blonde for some reason. The star pattern of Glinda's dress is still present (with a bigger, golden star on her cleavage, to represent the North star which, in this cartoon, she is the mistress of), but the dress herself has a drastic color change, with only the torso part of the dress being pink and the rest, skirt plus sleeves, becoming pure white. Glinda keeps the strange high pink crown of MGM's Glinda, but the jewels on it go from random silvery jewels to deep purple ones actually shaped in a given pattern - you can see a crescent moon on the crown. As for her wand, while still longer than a traditional magic wand, it is still not as long as the MGM character's original staff, and if you look closely you will notice that a purple pattern appears on the star at the top - a crescent of moon seemingly passing in front of the sun (a motif that Owl House fans will recognize without a doubt). You can see it all in detail here:

Given the show's disdain (or ignorance) of the original books, I doubt the addition of purple in this Glinda's designs were supposed to be a hint at the Gillikin country. A last addition by the cartoon is the apparition of a few butterfly-shaped ornaments on Glinda's dress: one on her belt, a second on her shoulder, and a third around her neck. EDIT: Okay I got something completely wrong. I thought the butterflies in Glinda's dress were invented by this cartoon but actually NO! I checked back and the butterflies ARE on the original MGM Glinda's dress - silvery and shining. It is just that I never noticed them before. So my bad

[389]

SHELLEY DUVALL

[witchesoz]

And they did!

Among the many deleted scenes and cut song-recordings of the MGM movie, there was a reprise of "The Wicked Witch is Dead" by the Winkie guards, that slowly evolved into a reprise by the citizens of the Emerald City. The recording of this cut reprise has been published on the Internet for some times now, and has been floating around Youtube.

The Munchkins gave a whole musical number when the Wicked Witch of the East died. I demand the Winkies also give Dorothy a musical number as well for killing the Wicked Witch of the West.

[travelinglikethelight]

BOOP! Blink Twice (2024) | Dir. Zoë Kravitz

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

I was bored so I thought I'd make a little something....

Vincent Price MGM logo...

[gifs-of-puppets]

The Muppets Go to the Movies (1981)

[eternamenteaudreyhepburn]

Audrey Hepburn photographed during a hair and wardrobe tests for Green Mansions at MGM Studios in 1958.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Fred Astaire and Judy Garland - Easter Parade (1948)

[justbusterkeaton]

The Cameraman (1928)

Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

[witchesoz]

I randomly found on this Internet this picture of Glinda from the MGM movie... and where the colors were changed/muted in such a way that Glinda's outfit appears white instead of pink. And I wanted to share this, because this shows how Glinda's outfit would have looked like if the MGM crew had stuck with the original description by Baum of the Good Witches wearing white.

[roses-in-hollywood]

MGM ads in The New Movie Magazine (1933-1934). These would feature MGM’s mascot Leo the Lion conversing with his stars such as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, and John Barrymore.

[fitsofgloom]

Is It Something In Your Head? Will You Believe It When You're Dead? GREEEEEN SLIIIIIIIME!: Theater promotion, featuring babes in body stockings and go-go boots, for Toei's/MGM's "The Green Slime," 1968.

[busterkeatonsociety]

#ThrowbackThursday The cover of German movie magazine Film-Kurier’s pullout for “The Cameraman.”

[travelinglikethelight]

Blink Twice (2024) | Directed by Zoë Kravitz

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Basil Rathbone publicity photo for Tales of Terror (1962)